The airport two hours flying time north of Delhi has one runway, one luggage carousel, and just outside, a line of men holding placards including one gentleman whose placard has your name on it.
You go with him.
Is he your driver? Does he speak any English?
No, but he gets you to your driver and you get into the car the driver drives (a Ranger Rover sort of affair) as you tip Mr. Placard 100 rupees given that the twenty you tried to offer brings on only eye rolls and smirks.
On the way to the driver, you followed eye-roll placard guy through a squash of guys asking to help with your bag, each chiming in with “taxi,” “taxi” “taxi.”
At this sort of outpost, everyone knows when the plane lands and primes themselves to work the well-fed Delhi-ites who arrive here on business or to start a holiday, any over-dressed American with no idea how much 100 rupees is a prime target, I would imagine.
More than amiable, and with ten or twenty words of English to use in conversation, your driver’s affect bodes well, even if the time it takes to get out of the airport parking lot foretells a drive from hell and to paradise . . .
. . . but more on that, and tonight’s dinner with the girls of the hidden forest inn, tomorrow and days that follow.