 |
| Taxi stand in our neighborhood |
One concern I had about living in India was my daily transportation to-and-from school. There are about 35 apartments on campus, but since the school now has over 150 teachers, most people live off-campus (anywhere from 5 to 35 minutes away). Our first week in India, the school had a driver pick me up and drive me home - the good life! After that, I was on my own. My morning routine consisted of calling the neighborhood taxi stand, waiting outside, and haggling over fares with taxi drivers whose meters were always "broken" and covered with cloths or newspapers. (There has been a problem lately of taxis overcharging foreigners and insisting on charging sometimes double what the normal rate would be for locals. We hear this problem has gotten worse since the start of the
Commonwealth Games in October of this year. The Commonwealth Games was the largest international event EVER in New Delhi. Sort of a small-scale "Olympics" with athletes from around the world competing in events ranging from Aquatics to Wrestling. At the games in New Delhi-2010 there were 6700 athletes representing 71 countries. We arrived in India the day AFTER the closing ceremonies, but the taxi drivers had already figured it out. Foreigners = more moolah in their pockets.)
My afternoon routine consisted of walking down a few blocks to the "Diplomat" taxi stand and again haggling over fares. Some days I would pay 120 rupees and some days 180 rupees (equivalent to about $4). One afternoon I lucked out and hopped in the taxi-van of "Kapoor the Taxi Driver". He turned the meter on right away--instead of saying "meter broken" or "old meter" and banging on it like most drivers insisted. He happily drove me home and then inquired, "Come back tomorrow morning for pick up?" "Sure," I said, "7:30 - Same price tomorrow?" "Of course," smiled Kapoor.
Since then Kapoor has driven me to school every morning (well it's only been a week) and I even call him some afternoons to drive me home after school. Today I decided to take my chances and not call Kapoor because I didn't want to wait for him to get there. I walked to the taxi stand and saw 2 taxi drivers sitting next to their black & yellow cars. They looked at me expectantly, when suddenly Kapoor pulled up out of nowhere and said "Come with me" - my driver had arrived!
Almost all foreign families and businessmen have a car and driver to take them anywhere, anytime. Kapoor is my "driver" for the moment. It's a relief not to worry about transportation each morning, and know that I'll be paying the same fare everyday. I pay the equivalent of about $3 each way...$6 a day... $30 a week in taxi fares. Not too bad! My daily commute is 10 minutes in the morning and anywhere from 15-30 minutes in the evening.
The morning commute is the most interesting - and the inspiration for a future blog post: Bike Deliveries. I plan to write about and document the things I see people carrying or hauling on bikes (the kind with 2 wheels and pedals - not motorbikes). So far I have seen the following items on the back of bikes: a full-size LG refrigerator, large PVC pipes that must have been 20 feet long, wooden crates stacked up to at least 20 feet high, and chickens in cages (likely going to the meat markets). I plan to get photographic evidence of similar instances to share on the blog.
