In which I am not kidnapped.

I am here.

I almost came here either broke or very very late. As it is, the fact that I am here at all, rather than in the basement of some man's office, is quite lucky. Silly American man that I am.

When I get to the airport, there is supposed to be a car picking me up. There is not a car picking me up. I look everywhere - the airport, the private car section - I even checked every single license plate. Meanwhile, a man named Mr. Omid comes up, greets me in near-perfect English, and offers me a ride in his cab. He's nice enough that I tell him "ok, sure, if I can't find my driver, you're next in line."

Since my driver doesn't show up, he gets another man to pull his car around, we get in, and he says it will be 3000 rupees. That's $83. I say turn around and take me back to the airport. As he explains the expenses involved, including the fact that the tax to Uttar Pradesh is 600 rupees alone, I just continue iterating that it's too much. He can come as low as 1700, he says, but no more.

We make a deal. He drops me off at his office, where I get into another car and another driver takes me to Uttar Pradesh. 1200 rupees. So here I am, my first car ride in this country, and I'm in the back behind two large men who are planning on taking me to some unknown location, making me get out and switch my bags to another car of their choosing, and driving for two hours into and then out of the middle of nowhere. Needless to say I'm nervous. In fact, I'm gonna go with scared. And it doesn't help that they are eerily nice - they give me a business card, they talk to me in detail about what's going on, and are generally so reassuring that it's like they know I should be freaking out.

I really don't want to be kidnapped, but I think it's definitely possible and maybe probable. So I ask one man if I can borrow his phone to call my emergency contact for some information. I don't really need to know anything, I just want him to know I am alive and well and in India and reachable at this number at the moment, so if I do get kidnapped there is a chance someone might find me. He lets me make the call. While I've got Mr. Kaul on the line, I let him help me haggle a little on the price - but no avail - 1200 rupees it is.

With Mr. Kaul informed I tell Omid and the driver that I was nervous but am feeling better. They're talking Hindi over my head - not that I could understand them if they were speaking the 5 sentences I do know, but I get the feeling they're laughing a little at my paranoia.

We turn off at the office and make the trade. My new driver speaks no English at all. He's a great guy though - works his butt off trying to find Sector 55. The new car is not air conditioned and has flies and mosquitoes flying around, but I could sure care less. What I do care about is the clusterf**k that is the driving around here. There are lanes that the Indian government has quite nicely painted on the roads - it would be awesome if people actually used them. As it is, a 3-lane highway fits about 5 cars and 3 motorcycles side by side. And people are constantly shifting around and jockeying for position. People are walking right in between the cars while they're moving, and everybody gives the cows in the road a wide berth (yes, that's right, cows. In the middle of the road. And it's normal.)

We drive for over two hours just to get there because traffic is so bad. When we finally get to NOIDA (in Uttar Pradesh), we start driving a little slower, and my driver asks basically every fifth person how to get to A-1, Sec-55, where I will be living. About half of the people tended to point one way, and another half would point the other way. Didn't matter how close we were: I think we were looking at the building at one point and somebody told us to drive past it and take a left.

When we finally arrived, about 4 hours after I got off the plane, I paid the man his 1200 rupees, and tipped him 100 (about $2.75 USD) in gratitude. His eyes got really big and he looked really excited. Me, I was just excited to know that I was going to have a bed for the night.