The moment I reached the open doorway of the 747 it was immediately apparent that I was in a very foreign place. The hot humid air of that September night carried the rich odors of diesel fumes and a floral scent which I could not identity. I passed through the portal of the plane’s door and walked down the stairs onto the warm tarmac. The combination of sleep depravation, the sudden envelopment of wet warm air and the high pitched rush of jet engines made my head spin. A slight man wearing a pencil thin mustache motioned us towards the door of the arrivals lounge. Through the mist of the that humid evening I could see red neon lights, in both English and Hindi, welcoming us to New Delhi. Unlike the hermetically sealed and sterile entranceways and exits of the American and European airports, here I was smelling, seeing and feeling India just moments after touchdown. I thought, perhaps naively, that It was as if the organic nature of India would not, or could not, be held at bay by a building or protocol.

As I entered the arrivals terminal many of my unfounded preconceived notions of India amazingly enough proved to be accurate, at least for my abbreviated stay. I expected India to be crowded and from an initial glimpse at the arrivals terminals this was true. A large glass wall situated above the floor of the terminal allowed waiting families and friends to look for arriving passengers. From my perspective I saw a sea of faces pressed tightly against a window giving me the distinct impression that I was either in a zoo or some bizarre science experiment.. I was comforted by the though that I did not have to go "out there", that I was in transit, that I did not have to encounter the "teaming masses." There was also a great deal of confusion. We could not find any one to tell us where the transit passengers needed to go. Only after much of the crowd in the terminal had dispersed did we get the attention of an airport official long enough to find out what we need to do. We were instructed to check our bags through to Kathmandu and then go wait in the transit lounge, which was through some innocuous frosted glass doors on the left of the arrival lounge.

My 10 hour layover in the Delhi transit lounge confirmed the last of my preconceived notions; that India was dirty. The transit lounge consisted of two mismatched rectangular rooms attached at the center by a short hallway. In the larger of the two rooms were an inactive snackbar and duty free shopping counter, both of which were covered with a fine layer of dust suggesting that they had not been open for a long time. The men’s bathroom was a putrid mess. The two western style toilets were broken and shit was piled high enough to extend above the rim of the bowl. The seating of the room consisted of molded plastic yellow seats and the lighting was entirely florescent. My traveling partners and I tried to make the time pass as quickly as possible. We played cards, told stories, and read books. I would occasionally walk over to the doors that led out to the tarmac to sneak a peak out into the night. At the door I once again caught a whiff of the sweet smelling night air and with it the buzzing of some kind of bug I could not see. After a short while by the door an army private garbed in an ill fitting army uniform would motioned me away. In the end my nervous energy exhausted itself and I curled up in a chair to sleep.

I woke up with a start sometime in the early morning. My neck was over the arm of a chair and My eyes were pointed towards the ceiling. I slowly focused my attention on an object affixed to the light fixture. Above and to the left of me was a winged bug about the size of a small chocolate eclair clinging precariously to the light’s white lattice work. It appeared to me that the bug was too heavy to be able to support itself for too long upside down. For over a half an hour I watched the bug make slow and steady progress across the room. Eventually the bug, either tiring from its effort or from a misstep fell from the ceiling onto the chest of an Austrian tourist stretched out on a camp mat on the floor. The impact of the bug on the mans chest woke him. The man seemed to be unfazed to wake to find a huge bug flapping helplessly on his chest. He grasped the animal by its wing and flung it across the room like a Frisbee. Unfortunately for the bug a porter moving a large dolly of luggage was passing at the time and the bug was caught under the wheels of the passing cart. An audible crunch was by heard by all.

Not long after the bug incident our flight was called and it was time to leave. My initial impressions of India sealed by these distorted visions. It would be two years before I would return.