Dates

2025 FEB

India in Brief

Historically this is where the Indus civilisation sat, and where the Maurya and Gupta dynasties and the Mughal Empire left their brilliant inheritance.

It has passed China to become the most populous country in the world. More than 1.4 billion people.

The capital is New Delhi.

As of 2025 it ranks fourth by GDP — an economic power, and a country of overwhelming variety, with roughly 2,138 languages in use.

The official language is Standard Hindi, with a second official language alongside it: English.

Over 80% are Hindu, dominantly so, with Muslims at 14%.

It already stood out in outsourced IT subcontracting. Now, with Hyderabad and Bengaluru as its bases, it is moving toward being an IT power in its own right.

Its world-famous foods include curry and tandoori chicken.

For me, India brings curry to mind first.

Why I Ended Up Going to India...

I like looking at beautiful buildings.

The biggest criterion by which I pick a destination is each country’s own cultural heritage.

I want to see what a country has left behind, what it is proud of, the traces of it.

In writing this travelogue I intend to be blunt, and to hold nothing back.

India is lined with brilliant heritage, but there were serious problems with safety, hygiene and civic behaviour.

I think you should not travel with illusions.

I sort destinations into two kinds.

Rest, and adventure.

Places that are relatively unhurried and easy to travel are for rest.

Places that are unfamiliar, that demand stamina and leave no room for ease, are for adventure.

India had always sat at the top of the adventure list.

India’s Taj Mahal is counted among the most beautiful pieces of architectural heritage in the world.

So an Indian adventure was never a question of whether, only of when.

As always, travel takes money and time.

Adventure especially needs thorough preparation.

From planning the transport onward, everything bookable has to be booked.

Once the dates are fixed, the decision cannot be taken back.

Incheon Aeropuerto!

And the day came.

I got up at six in the morning, got ready and left.

My father drove me to the airport, so the trip out was easy.

I saw a sunrise for the first time in a long while.

The area around the airport is mostly industrial estates, and the red sun rising between the apartment blocks and the factories was strangely beautiful.

An ordinary scene arrived as something unfamiliar.

I had heard that these days you should get to the airport at least three hours before boarding.

The number of people travelling abroad has grown a lot, and the airport staff are working that much harder, which has slowed things down.

Boarding was at eleven, so I arrived at the airport by eight.

You can watch how busy the airport is online in real time, and the window I was arriving in — seven to nine — was the most crowded.

Once I got there it was, thankfully, less packed than I expected.

There were a fair number of people at the baggage check while I checked in, but it was over within ten minutes.

Whether my bowels are simply regular or simply weak, I always have to go to the toilet before going anywhere.

The moment I reached the airport my stomach turned again and I went hunting for a toilet.

I finished and got to the food court around half past nine; a little later and I would not have found a seat.

My body was already tired and my eyes were dry.

I had assumed Air India would have at least one Indian cabin crew member, but this crew were all Korean.

Airlines seem to staff the crew by nationality according to the airport.

What I Packed

For this trip I put together my kit properly, skincare products included.

And I packed only clothes I intended to throw away at the destination.

Throwing out clothes day by day out there means the luggage keeps shrinking, so it was a good call.

India’s spice smell is very strong, and I did not bring clothes I like, in case the smell settled into them.

Daytime temperatures are over 20°C, so I packed mostly short sleeves and shorts.

Night temperatures are around 10°C, a swing of ten degrees, so I did bring long sleeves, long trousers and a light down jacket.

On this itinerary I had booked both of the restaurants on the World’s Best Restaurants list.

Places like that ask for smart casual, so long sleeves and long trousers were genuinely needed.

India is a destination whose reputation for difficulty rivals Egypt’s.

Hygiene and any sense of time were the worries.

But there is a subtle pleasure that comes out the far end of the sudden turns and the twists that variables throw at you.

A solid head is one of the things you pack.

Breakfast

For breakfast I had Namsan Wang Donkatsu, and it was pretty poor.

The underlying reason is probably that I am a cheapskate weighing value for money.

What I ordered was a cutlet, half classic sauce and half spicy sauce.

That comes to nearly 12,000 won.

Then again, thinking it over, for airport food at today’s prices I decided it was a fair price.

In detail: it is called a giant cutlet, but the size was not much.

The meat, which is what matters, was genuinely bad, and the frying was at frozen-cutlet level.

I should have had Taco Bell or Shake Shack instead.

Odds and Ends

I went to the toilet again.

My stomach is very weak.

Boarding started at the scheduled 11:25, and we took off around noon.

I paid nearly 70,000 won for an exit-row seat where I could stretch my legs out.

But only my legs were comfortable — there was nowhere to put anything, so it was quite cramped and awkward.

With a seat in front of you, a small bag on your lap does not slide around, which is comfortable.

This seat had no seat in front, so putting a bag on my lap was awkward.

There is a trade-off.

There was a dignified professor and a student of his, apparently on their way to a conference.

The professor asked why I was going somewhere as hard as India.

I answered that I want to go to places that are physically hard while I am young, and to easy places when I am older.

The professor was generous with praise, and made a particular point of calling it brave to go to India alone.

More than anything, the professor seemed to envy youth itself.

The In-Flight Meal

The in-flight meal was chicken rice.

Butter biryani as the main, with chicken makhani and spinach curry as sauces on either side.

The biryani was good, and the spinach curry was edible but too spicy, so I left it.

The chicken makhani was simple to the point of being close to tomato sauce, not layered at all.

In a way, thinking that I had tasted mainland Indian curry without having landed yet, I got some sense of a baseline for what curry tastes like.

For a snack they brought tandoori chicken wrapped in a wrap.

The mild curry flavour was not overdone, and the chicken was cooked moist.

The bell pepper inside struck an off-beat harmony.

This was so good that I wanted another one.

Sage Filter

New Delhi is famous for having some of the worst air pollution in the world.

The Delhi sky I saw before the plane landed was the colour of urine with smog.

A dreadful colour.

It was as though someone had applied the sage filter from a camera app.

Fumbling It

For this trip I brought an e-SIM.

But registering it needs Wi-Fi.

At New Delhi airport the free Wi-Fi only works if you are given a code, which left me badly stuck.

I went back and forth hunting for a staff member who knew the code, but hardly anyone spoke English, and the ones I found only said they did not know it.

In the end I used data roaming.

Roaming burned nearly 10,000 won in a matter of seconds.

Oh my God — the swearing came out by itself.

When I travel I use a platform called Travel Wallet.

You exchange currency in the app, and cash withdrawn from a foreign ATM with the card they issue comes out without a fee.

So I had loaded money onto Travel Wallet, and then fumbled it at an SBI ATM while taking the money out.

I used to live in the United States, so I used ATMs constantly.

It had been so long since I came back to Korea that I was not even sure whether to choose savings or credit.

Savings is a savings deposit account; credit is a current account.

A service like Travel Wallet is obviously a current account.

Either way, I withdrew the 20,000 rupees I had exchanged.

The worst of it was that I had thought a credit card was registered on Uber, and it was not.

I was using the Uber account I had had in the States, and perhaps for that reason only the cards I used in the States were registered.

To make it worse, none of the cards I had on me would register in the Uber app.

I got an Uber in the end but still could not register a card, so I decided to just pay in cash.

There is an Uber pickup point at this airport too, so I went over, met the driver I had just booked, and got in.

Exhaust

I had expected to be out of the airport around six; I came out at 7:25 p.m., more than an hour later.

I had originally booked the well-known restaurant Bukhara for half past seven that day.

I had expected more twists than usual on the first day.

And thinking that getting out of the airport would take a while, I moved it to another day.

As it turned out, that was the right call.

Like Japan, India puts the driver’s seat on the right.

Presumably because it was a British colony.

Just sitting still in the back was hard going, because the horns went off at all hours and the smell of exhaust set my head throbbing.

The car I was in was an old grey Suzuki, something like a 2000s model.

For one thing, you rolled the window down with a crank.

It was 16°C and still chilly, so I dug out the long-sleeved top I had taken off indoors and put it back on.

India’s fierce spice smell was less noticeable than I had expected.

What dominated instead was the particular exhaust smell of heavy traffic.

Lima in Peru had heavy traffic and a strong exhaust smell too, and this was much the same.

An enormous population, and that many vehicles on the road, must be the root cause of the exhaust.

The city’s first impression was not a ‘scent’ but ‘smoke’.

JHOUSE Hostel

It took about thirty minutes from the airport to my lodging, JHouse.

The fare was 480 rupees, and I handed over 500 to get 20 back.

I only had 500-rupee notes to begin with.

The driver only said he had no 20-rupee note.

In a word, he was saying: just give me the whole 500.

The driver pretended not to understand a word of English.

I dug in and sat still.

No change, no getting out — fine by me.

20 rupees is about 310 won.

Not a large sum, but as the dust piles into a mountain, keeping on handing it over adds up to a surprisingly large outlay.

In the end the driver went out, changed a 20-rupee note at a nearby shop and gave it to me.

I did not like that he was trying to round it off however he could, but perhaps because I had expected little, I did not find the man himself unpleasant.

Grinning away and being that brazen about it was almost a bit endearing.

On the other hand it made me wonder whether every taxi driver I met from here on would be this brazen.

There was a gym downstairs.

People who work hard at looking after themselves are impressive wherever they are.

The Rooftop and the Corridor

Jhouse was on the third floor of a shabby building, and when I arrived the rooftop turned out to be nicely done up.

Though at this place towels cost extra. 80 rupees.

They explained that the towel charge and the room charge are settled at checkout, and I went up to the room.

This is the space they made of the corridor between the rooms.

It looks a little bare in the photo, but at the time I thought it was nicely done.

This is a mixed-sex hostel, and I slept on the top of a bunk bed.

Below me a Canadian girl had the spot, and on the top bunk beside me was a French boy.

The girl said she was travelling for six months, the boy for three.

Both of them seemed to be taking a gap year.

I wondered how old they were and guessed both were at least five years younger than me.

The girl spoke French with the boy — so a fair number of Canadians can speak some French after all.

Shower Room + Latrine

The shower room was the worst of any place I have stayed in my life.

The shower head is in the toilet, so if anyone took a dump you could not shower.

And the other way round: if anyone was showering, you held it in whatever you needed.

The hot and cold water fought each other to come out first, switching every ten seconds.

And after all that the water came in dribbles — washing my face alone took about five minutes.

My face is on the large side, but no face is large enough to take five minutes.

The hot water seemed to work by collecting water and heating it.

But it did not seem to be working properly; I alone showered in what was near enough cold water.

It was late, so I assumed I was the last one to shower.

And I guessed that whoever showered after me would not get a single drop of hot water.

Oh hell — the poor Canadian girl went in to shower.

There was no hot water left to come out, and the water must have dribbled even thinner.

The girl showered for thirty minutes, making embarrassed noises the whole time.

She may well have changed her mind about six months in India inside those thirty minutes.

Once you are in India it is survival of the fittest. Adapt and that is that.

My own adaptability is a touch feeble.

End of Day One

Even with nothing much on the schedule, the first day felt like something of a spectacle.

In any case, in surroundings this awkward and unfamiliar, I become more distinct to myself.

The judgements I make in the face of things that are physically and instinctively hard seem to state, clearly, who I actually am.