Arriving in the evening at Hlavni Nadrazi I took a nocturnal stroll round downtown Prague, ate a hot dog at Mustek, watched local band Garage rock and roll in Vagon Klub then had a kip before heading to the airport at 8am for a flight to Delhi via the ever-hideous airless crypt of teeming Istanbul airport, eventually turning up in the Indian capital at 5am the next morning. With surprising speed, the grandly mustachioed soldier put a visa in my passport and mumbled a welcome and I stumbled out into sticky darkness to be surrounded by 20 blokes bellowing 'TAXI!' at me just as they do in Bahrain. It's an Indian custom, I guess.
An Ambassador car pulled up, gleaming black, and I got in. The driver asked where to and I blathered about with a name that was in my head but not exactly on the tip of my tongue ... Parna Ganja or something like that, I told him, fishing around for the proper address in my pocket.
As he slowly drove one-handed along empty streets, he turned in the seat and asked, "Ganja? You want ganja? Smoke?"
"Eh?"
"Smoke! You like smoke charras?"
"Well, now you mention it ... "
This was the first time in my life that I'd ever been offered pot almost the second I'd set foot in a country. Good start! And with that he pulled over onto the hard shoulder of a car-free three lane highway (see photo below left) and rolled the quickest joint I've ever seen rolled, lit it up, passed it over and we sat there and smoked and chuckled and coughed and by the time we arrived at the hotel Delhi was becoming well and truly interesting - see photo below right.
An Ambassador car pulled up, gleaming black, and I got in. The driver asked where to and I blathered about with a name that was in my head but not exactly on the tip of my tongue ... Parna Ganja or something like that, I told him, fishing around for the proper address in my pocket.
As he slowly drove one-handed along empty streets, he turned in the seat and asked, "Ganja? You want ganja? Smoke?"
"Eh?"
"Smoke! You like smoke charras?"
"Well, now you mention it ... "
This was the first time in my life that I'd ever been offered pot almost the second I'd set foot in a country. Good start! And with that he pulled over onto the hard shoulder of a car-free three lane highway (see photo below left) and rolled the quickest joint I've ever seen rolled, lit it up, passed it over and we sat there and smoked and chuckled and coughed and by the time we arrived at the hotel Delhi was becoming well and truly interesting - see photo below right.
I had a meet-up with an old Czech friend now overseeing Malec Trotter Independent Trading Co. from his Delhi office, read: cheapo hotel room with phone. The boy's gone global and good on him for that because he's put the work in and, for a Czech, is quite honest. Hehe.
I spent a couple of days here and the pollution was truly awful rivaling Asia's King of Smog Beijing, and after enjoying seeing young boys walking down the street with cricket bat in hand, doing the slum walk on an hourly basis, watching Arsenal beat Leicester City, the time came to move south and back to the airport for a 3 hour flight down to Kochi in Kerala.