Notes from Delhi Airport

There is a bizarre system for taking a taxi at the airport in New Delhi in the unlikely event your driver does not show up, which of course happened to us.  Once you've read and re-read all the name plaques looking for yours and given up all hope that the driver is there, you wander over to the fixed rate cab booth.  You pay whatever the rate is for your destination - in our case, about $5, which probably included about a 300% profit margin - and, once they get the printer working, they give you two copies of a receipt that includes the license plate number of your cab.  Theoretically, the radio taxi dispatcher has already called your driver and told him you're waiting.  You go to the streetside waiting area, show your receipt to yet another dispatcher, who squawks something into his walkie talkie, presumably telling your driver to pull right on up.  Unfortunately, in the one lane allotted to the cabs, at any given moment ten or more cabs are jockeying for position, and the line behind them stretches back farther than you can see, so even if your cab driver has received the message that you are there, paid up and ready to roll, he could be miles away in the parking lot.  Plus, patience is not a virtue people of any nationality waiting for a cab at the airport show, and so regardless of receipt license plate numbers, people are piling into whichever free cab they can find.  I'm sure that when the system was designed, it all made perfect sense.

We had the by now customary several minutes delay at immigration as everyone paused to wonder how Jody could have thought she could get away with forging a visa with an expired exit date that predates the issuance date, and then, once everybody realizes not even malicious foreigners could be that stupid and that the error probably did indeed lie with the issuing consulate, we are on our way through the thoroughly modern Delhi airport.  Lots of good shops, especially a great chocolate shop.  We decide to get a coffee with our last remaining rupees - we have enough for one cappuccino, leaving us with 15 rupees (30 cents) left over in cash.  The coffee shop has a book for customer comments.  Most people have written things like "very good coffee" and "tres aimables" and "muy bueno" and scribblings in languages I don't read, but the last comment catches our eye.  Someone has written, "They threw hot water on my baby and told me she was ugly."