Page 18 of Eva Reddy’s Trip of a Lifetime

Passenger to India

The seatbelt sign switches on and the plane begins its descent into Delhi. I feel like throwing up. But it’s not airsickness or the after-effects of my enthusiastic patronage of the business class drinks trolley.

Thousands of feet above the earth’s surface, I felt invincible.

But like Icarus, I soared too close to the sun.

The moment the landing gear shudders beneath me, my courage dissolves.

I am forced to consider what I will do when I arrive and the prospect terrifies me—which is possibly my first rational response to anything in the last forty-eight hours.

This entire scheme is bonkers. Completely unhinged. I am about to disembark in a foreign country, on a quest to find two people who most probably do not want to be found. I am by myself, and my only point of reference is my mother’s inane TikTok videos.

But crazy or not, my scheme does have the upside of putting some distance between myself and my cheating husband, while also (hopefully) reining in my reprobate parents.

I am determined to find Mum and Dad and bring them home.

Or I will find them and drive them to the Taj Mahal or the Ganges or whatever it is they simply have to see.

And then I’ll bring them home. And by the time I’m back in Sydney, I’ll be ready to face Jonathan and deal with his infidelity and what that means for our future.

My fingers fumble to unfasten my seatbelt as we taxi to our gate.

I try to lift my spirits by imagining Jonathan finding my note and then burning his dinner to a microwaved crisp.

When that doesn’t work, I add smoke, a fire engine and some minor burns to my fantasy.

I still can’t shake my feeling of dread.

I am so screwed. But somehow, I put one foot in front of the other and push on into the unknown.

The first thing that hits me as I step off the plane is the oppressive heat.

The air is hot and heavy and suffocating.

Actually, it doesn’t feel like air at all, but rather like some other state that exists between gas and liquid and sticks to your skin and coats the inside of your mouth.

I am already sweating as I hurry along the air bridge and into the mercifully cool terminal.

I make it through immigration (again, a surprisingly smooth procedure) and then to the baggage claim.

While I wait for the carousel to rumble to life, I open my guidebook to the section on how to catch a taxi from Delhi airport.

I’ve read the paragraph a couple of times.

It seems simple enough. I have to buy a voucher inside the terminal.

That voucher then translates into a reputable government-sanctioned driver who will drive a clean, modern cab and will deposit me directly at my hotel.

I repeat the instructions to myself over and over. How hard can it be?

I retrieve my bag without incident and am congratulating myself on a job well done when I look up.

A heaving mass of bodies is headed toward me.

All the luggage has come out at once, triggering a polite stampede.

I am swept up by the mob. I am jostled this way and that in the crush, my ankles constantly catching the edges of suitcases and prams. It is everything I can do to stay on my feet.

I can’t see where I am going but the pull of the crowd is as strong and relentless as a riptide.

Before I know it, I’ve been deposited outside the terminal like jetsam washed up on a beach. I am also without a voucher and wearing a face that screams ‘scam me now’.

A few dozen young men clock my expression and swarm around me, shouting over the top of one another and waving their arms about like stricken helicopters.

I can make out a few words and sentences here and there, enough to know that I have ventured into the realm of those taxi drivers who are not government sanctioned.

‘Madam, I have been sent to drive you from the airport.’

‘I will take you to an excellent hotel.’

‘You want a taxi. Come with me. Let’s go. We must hurry.’

I stand in the middle of the scrum. The wrap-around crepe maxi dress that had seemed like such a sensible travel choice back in Sydney sticks like cling wrap to my body.

I am drenched in sweat, trapped and confused, my mouth hanging open and uncertain what to do.

The men continue yelling at me, mistaking my fugue-like state for indecision.

They make no allowances for personal space and I don’t have the confidence or the energy to push them away.

I could have stayed like that indefinitely, paralysed in horror like Carrie at the prom, but one of the drivers, spying an opportunity, elbows his way to the front of the pack.

He grabs my bag and starts walking away.

I immediately give chase, uncertain whether I am pursuing a thief or heading to my cab.

The man/potential thief is taller and broader than anyone around him, so he is easy to keep in sight, even with his long strides.

His unusual height and build will also be handy if I need to pick him out of a police line-up.

He walks and I scurry for fifteen minutes or more through a maze of parking stations, leaving the relatively clean and efficient airport far behind.

I wonder if I am being lured to my death but I am too tired and disoriented to care.

The walkways become smaller and darker and stickier underfoot until the man eventually stops next to a three-wheeled contraption: part car, part motorbike, part Christmas tree.

The vehicle (I assume it is a vehicle) is adorned with enormous amounts of tinsel. Although judging from the oil that has puddled underneath the engine, the decorations are probably holding it together and not there only for cosmetic effect.

The man turns to me and places my suitcase at my feet.

‘My name is Utkarsh. I am your driver this evening.’ Of all the imagined options—thief, killer, kidnapper—that Utkarsh has identified himself as my driver is an excellent result.

He has a faint Australian accent, presumably acquired through repeated screenings of Neighbours and Crocodile Dundee .

I clamber into the back seat of my ride and sit, hugging my suitcase to my chest.

Utkarsh jumps into the front seat and looks at me through the rear-vision mirror. ‘Where do you wish to go, madam?’

I give him the name of the hotel I had booked before leaving home. But instead of starting up the engine, he takes his hands off the steering wheel and turns to me.

‘I am sorry, I cannot do this,’ he announces.

My stomach once again lurches to my throat.

‘What do you mean you cannot do this?’

‘This hotel is full.’

‘That’s okay. I have a booking.’ My stomach retreats to its usual location. But the U-turn is only temporary.

‘By full, I mean it’s not there anymore.’

‘What do you mean it’s not there?’

‘There was a fire. It burnt down last week.’

‘But I booked it last night.’

‘By last week, I mean this morning. Terrible. Terrible.’ Utkarsh’s head bobbles from side to side, an affectation at odds with his hybrid Australian accent.

Given my run of dreadful luck and the fiasco that masquerades as my life, the idea that my hotel burnt down while I was somewhere over the Indian Ocean seems perfectly feasible. I am only surprised I wasn’t in it at the time.

‘But what do I do?’ My watch beeps an urgent health warning.

‘It’s okay, I have a friend.’

‘What kind of friend?’

‘He is a travel agent. He knows all the best hotels and all the best prices. I will take you there immediately.’ He turns his attention back to the road and starts the engine, not bothering to wait for a response.

We exit the car park and hurtle off down the street, connecting with so many potholes I have to believe that Utkarsh is either targeting them on purpose or he is the worst driver in the city’s unsanctioned fleet. For once I am grateful for all the extra cushioning on my backside.

After a while, I become used to being thrown about and even learn how to shift my body to avoid serious injury.

But by then, I am more worried about the traffic racing all around me than potential bruising.

Trucks, buses, bikes, tractors, petrol tankers—every kind of vehicle imaginable competes for space, their horns honking like so many angry geese.

Often, they pass so close that I can feel the whoosh as they speed by.

Once, when we are stopped at a traffic light, a beggar’s hand reaches through the non-existent window and claws at my clothing. I hold my bag a little closer. But Utkarsh isn’t a fan of traffic lights or for stopping for anything other than the occasional cow, so it doesn’t happen again.

It is still cloyingly hot, but without any windows, the ‘car’ has excellent air flow.

That also means that we aren’t insulated from the smells that drift through from the street.

Not all of them are unpleasant, but they are foreign and strange, as though my favourite curry restaurant has opened up beside a petrol station that has a side business in selling manure.

I wouldn’t choose the scent as an air freshener, but it doesn’t make me gag either.

Eventually, Utkarsh pulls up at an unpromising-looking shop front and beckons for me to follow him. The sign over the store promises ‘Excellent Tourist Services’. Maybe it is the flaking paint or the plywood tacked over a section of the front window, but I’m not convinced.

I also vaguely recollect reading something relevant to this moment in my single girls’ guidebook, but I was four gin and tonics deep into my flight and half asleep at the time, so whatever it was hasn’t stuck. I guess if I can’t remember, it wasn’t that important.

I hope.