By day three in Delhi, fatigue was setting in. My world was split in two: into the relative tranquility of my hotel room and attached café, and the steaming, stifling mess of city around me. In here, I could read, watch TV, or just sit for a while. Out there I had to avoid getting clipped by passing auto-rickshaws, bitten by dogs, pawed at by cripples, and blinded by the heat and pollution. To go sightseeing, or walking, or exploring the city involved being out there, and not a single fibre in my body wanted to go out there. I needed to get out of Delhi.

I took a mercifully brief walk to the New Delhi train station to pick up a ticket to Amritsar, departing for 6 AM the next morning. The touts were in full sprout that day, with the singsong refrain of “hello my friend!” ringing in my ears repeatedly, almost rhythmically, as I walked.

India’s touts are legendary in the backpacker world, owing to the utter lack of timidity by the Indians to do or say anything for a few rupees, no matter how absurd, shameless, or sad. You might feel it a cruel fate, but you’d have to be made of stone not to laugh; desperate as these Indians may be, it would be barbaric to let actual human concern interfere with plain amusement. Everyone on the India backpacker circuit has stories: warnings of riots or fire near your hotel (so he can take you to another one), offers of taxi rides in a car with only three wheels (parked strategically to obscure this fact) or no brakes (a fact discovered only when the driver enters a parking lot and circles to a halt), and so on. As I approached the station, a tout approached me, and as we both stared at the thousands of people there—people at every information counter, platform, and ticket booth, and even sleeping on the floor—he told me that the train station was closed and that I’d better go with him. I thanked him for the laugh.

On the way back, one tout said hello and for some reason I decided to say hello back. The Main Bazaar is a confusing place, and I was looking for a shop that would sell me a plug adapter for India, and thought to ask this fellow. There was nothing unusual about this tout. He was a beefy guy with short hair, without moustache (in India this is rare enough to help distinguish people). He led me to a shop, without talking, and I bought an adapter from a guy for 30 rupees, and then I went back to my hotel, which happened to be next to his shop. Would I like to come in for a chai (tea)?

I said yes. I felt confident enough in my tout-repelling abilities to amuse myself for a little while by hanging out with a local. If he wants to sell me something, I’ll just say no and that will be that. After all, tomorrow morning I was off to Amritsar.

It turns out he’s from Kashmir. This fact put me on guard immediately, because the Main Bazaar is full of people selling vacation packages in Kashmir. While I have a great desire to visit Kashmir—in fact, my trip to Amritsar is the first step on my journey up to the north which will end in that same Kashmir, or at least, I think so—I didn’t want to buy an arranged tour package of any kind. I’m a low-budget traveller who can make his own fun, thank you.

He insisted on showing me pictures of his home and his family in Kashmir, and I thumbed through his albums uninterestedly. “Very nice,” I say. “Looks good. Nice lake.” He puts the albums away for a while and we talk about other things. His shop was a small crafts shop, selling necklaces and shawls and pipes for all that Kashmiri hashish, but he wasn’t selling me anything. I kept looking at the door.

His nephew was there too, and we played a game of chess (I won). The chai was good and sweet. Nothing much happened. They seemed like very decent people, fully aware that there’s no reason for a tourist like me to trust some guy chatting him up on the street, but I haven’t got much to say to them, having only been in India three days, and not really enjoying Delhi much. Out of the blue, the tout says: “Come to my house for dinner tonight!”

And off goes every bell in my head, every flashing sign that says “GET AWAY”, every siren and whirring red light. I did not fear for my safety, but more for the inevitable post-dinner conversation where he would sit me down in front of a series of informational brochures about trekking trips in Kashmir and parasailing expeditions in the Himalayas, with a contract and a thick black pen with which I’m supposed to sign away my dignity.

I said no thanks. And he said, no problem, I understand.

“Forget about business. Fuck money. Money ruins everything,” he said. It sure does, buddy.

But hey, wouldn’t you like to do some sightseeing in Delhi today? It’s your last day here after all. Earlier in our conversation I may have proffered the fact (can’t remember) that I would indeed like to see some things in Delhi, like the Lotus Temple, and some other stuff. He suggested that the nephew take me to some of these spots, since he knows Delhi and will get a “local” rate on auto-rickshaws (true). Sure, I said. That would be fine.

The first rickshaw ride was very long, maybe even one hour, and cost 80 rupees (2 dollars). It was to the Lotus Temple, the principal shrine of the Bahai faith, which I had never heard of. It was lovely, and the nephew was a very agreeable fellow, and we got along very well. His uncle is just selling stuff, he said, but he’s a good dude. And I agreed, he was a good dude, I just didn’t want to buy what he was selling.

After the Lotus Temple, he took me to a fascinating Muslim shrine somewhere in the heart of Delhi, in a neighbourhood that looked nothing like the Delhi I knew. It had the noise and the dirt and the beggars, yes, but this was a Muslim part of town, and it looked like a different country altogether. We wandered into a sea of white robes, into the depths of this strange tomb full of quivering, prostrating, crying Muslims. Bony children sat in front of their Ramazan meals, unable to eat them until dusk.

A tout followed us around for a while and then asked for 120 rupees for being our “tour guide”, and I told him to go piss up a rope.

My guide insisted on bringing me to the nearby mosque for the upcoming prayer. We left our shoes in an enormous heap, walked underground, washed our feet in a square pool, and then joined the prayer line in a bare, carpeted room. He didn’t tell me how to pray in a mosque, but I knew how it worked from my time in Turkey. Mostly I just copied what he did, and afterward, he said I was doing it all wrong.

We went back to the shop. I was so delighted by what I had seen that afternoon, and was so trusting of the tout’s nephew that I decided, okay, I’ll have dinner with you guys tonight.

Their apartment was nothing more than a single room with no furniture except a TV and fridge. They shared a kitchen and bathroom with the adjoining units of their apartment building, and one other small guest room with a Muslim shrine taking up half the space of the room. Their entire living space was smaller than my parents’ kitchen, and my parents’ kitchen ain’t big. But they had cable.

The nephew prepared a lovely, Kashmiri-style chicken curry and rice. We sat on the floor and watched cricket and ate: the tout, his nephew, his nephew’s friend, and me. They gave me a half-frozen Kingfisher and I shared it with them. Mostly, they talked amongst themselves in Urdu the whole time.

After we put the plates away, the tout said, okay, now we talk business.

He knew I was a tough customer, so he wanted only to book me on his houseboat, bobbing blissfully on lovely Lake Dal in Srinigar. It’s like a luxury hotel, he said. Showed me pictures. Yes, it was lovely. He gave me all his contact info and also that of his nephew, and they were legit. There was no obligation to do any mountain treks, any arranged tourist crap. Just go and hang out for a couple days, and then leave if you don’t like it, no questions asked.

Lonely Planet says: “Under no circumstances should you book a houseboat outside of Kashmir.” They had a point. After all, what way was there to verify what I was buying? What if his “houseboat” was a lean-to made of particle board and had a cut-out hole in the floor for a toilet? He showed me pictures but you know how pictures go; everyone always shows you their best one.

I was hesitant, but at the same time, I liked these people. Not just because they offered me food and sightseeing. They were genuine and decent. We got along splendidly. I just didn’t want to buy anything from them.

My defense was to pepper him with question after question. Tough ones. And he answered them well, very well indeed. He understood my reservations, but had a good and convincing answer for each of them. Not some half-assed Indian answer. This taxi didn’t have three wheels and no brakes. And after I’d exhausted every ounce of my ammunition, I waved the white flag and said, okay, I’ll stay for a couple days on your houseboat. I can’t say why. I had grown to trust this guy and his family, and had actual feelings for them, and in the glow of the moment I insisted on going along with the feeling, letting events play out as they may, so that my faith in humanity could be either confirmed or shattered to bits. So I said Yes.

But one last question… what am I supposed to do with my ticket to Amritsar? His reply: I’ll give you a refund for that ticket myself, and handed me the money right there. And that made me feel much better.

And the next day I was off to Kashmir.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 7:18 am and is filed under Kashmir, India.