Every which way but loose

India is an interesting place to get directions. First of all, when someone approaches you with directions, it's difficult to know whether someone is genuinely offering help or running a scam. While it's a bit of work to extricate yourself from a tout, it is far worse in my estimation to treat a kindly person as a nuisance. Yesterday at Isa Khan's tomb the security guard approached me to tell me the best place to take a photo and information about the tombs, etc. I was appreciative of what he was telling me but then I thought, "what if he wants money in exchange?" and thanked him but I had a guide. I saw the momentary hurt look in his eyes and felt like a total asshole, so I asked him about the designs on the outside and he perked up. Realistically, after hearing hundreds of guides give their spiel in the tomb, he probably had more information than any one of them. I thanked him immensely as I left and he gave me a friendly wave. It ended up being a nice interaction.

Today C, M, N & I wanted to go to the Craft Museum and, emboldened by our Old Delhi metro success, we decided to go by metro. While we were looking at the metro map and trying to sort out where the Craft Museum was in connection with the stops a young man came up and told us we needed to get off at Rajiv Chowk, which he said was very near the Craft Museum. Great. Off we went to Rajiv Chowk but none of its exits matched the streets near the museum on our map. We asked a lot of people in the station, including information staff, but either people didn't know or what they told us didn't match what we thought we knew. When we went outside a fella told us we were at least 7 kilometres from the area in which we wanted to be. This was a dilemma. Misdirection or misinformation to get tourists in your rickshaw or "tourist bureau" is super common business. Do we trust him? We decided to go for it and got a super nice rickshaw driver to take us to the museum where I bought a misrepresented pashmina, but that's another story.

Tonight we are on an overnight train to Khajuraho. We needed to leave from the Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station so G set up a taxi pickup for us and our luggage from the hotel. It took us awhile to get to the station winding through the streets of Old Delhi. That should have been our first clue. When the taxi pulled in, G asked him twice "Nizamuddin?" and he answered yes. Taxis took off, we made our way to the station and G went to check if our train was on time. Problem - our train wasn't on the board at all because we were at the wrong station. G hustled us out like the beating of a hummingbird's wings and shoved us into a series of rickshaws. We whizzed through the streets two by two in our crazy zigzagging rickshaws. As we were zipping down Mahatma Gandhi Marg I saw two men riding an elephant along the road. I was so agog I let my purse gape open and a piece of paper whipped out and down the road. Hope it wasn't important.

When we finally made it to the right railway station, G and N were nowhere to be found. Our rickshaw drivers wanted their money from G and we needed to find G because she had our train tickets and instructions. There was much todo involving phones and impatient rickshaw drivers before we got G on her cellphone and arranged for H to pay the drivers and us to find the two of them. When we finally got into the building we were swarmed with red coated porters yelling for us to give our bags and follow them. Our group was frazzled and H couldn't hear G's directions on the cellphone with all these guys yammering in our ears. I had a moment I probably picked up from some bitchy past schoolteacher where I whirled around on the group of porters, made a loud sharp unmistakable knock-it-off-type sound accompanied by a dramatic horizontal handsweep gesture. They jumped and actually shut up for a moment. I thought it was kind of a dick move on my part, but C was impressed and thought it warranted. I should probably not be encouraged in my imperiousness.

G and N did finally find us, after a nice Indian man told us two ladies just down the platform were looking for us