The House that didn't want to be found

A funny little travel story about a week spent in Delhi and the strange inner workings of my brain. Proceed at your own peril.

What travelling after a long time at home feels like. Credits

I got lost on my arrival. I wasn’t expecting to, but it might as well happen to me. I had arrived a day early for my work trip to Delhi, thinking, as any ambitious traveler does, to experience the local ‘culture’ and ‘flavour’ before work actually started.

My manager had sent us the location for a place called - ‘DR Regidency’ which the autocorrect inside my brain corrected to Dr. Regency, a result, no doubt of an unhealthy obsession over regency dramas (ahem, Bridgerton). Dr.Regency sounded regal and decorous. I even had a mental debate in the taxi, on the way to my destination, as to how Mr. Regency (I imagined him to be the old, distinguished gent after whom the hotel had been named) had earned his Doctorate. Sometimes I have mental debates where I have long internal dialogues about stuff. Sometimes it resembles a kangaroo court, where I find myself capable of being convinced about anything and everything under the sun. It is a very accepting sort of place.

Rousing myself from my internal rambling, I found myself coming to a strange realisation. The google map location, wasn’t exactly taking me to Mr.Regency. It seemed like there should be a hotel? inn? in between the two houses in front of me, but there wasn’t. I half expected them to part, and Dr.Regency to reveal itself and welcome the weary traveler into its premises. Like the scene where Harry finds himself in front of House no 11 and House no 13 (but no 12) until House no 12, Grimmauld Place is revealed - hidden from the Muggle eye, invisible to all but a few wizards.

After dragging my trolley up and down the street several times, I was tapped on my shoulder by a gent who asked me what I was looking for. He appeared concerned and said he would help me look for my destination. I looked at him calculatingly, trying to figure out his angle. He wasn’t young, so he couldn’t have any nefarious plans (or could he?). An unfortunate side-effect of being a women in these trying times is that you doubt the most genuine intentions and look for an ‘angle’ in everything and everyone.

Together we pored over the map, scratching our heads, pointing the phone this way and that and looking for secret pathways that did not exist. Like vultures sensing weakening prey, autowallahs circled closer to us, hoping no doubt to extract some extra cash from the confused tourist. My companion swatted them away like bees.

Some phonecalls back and forth to my manager and the hotel later, we finally came to conclusion that gasp! Google Maps was wrong. Not just wrong, it was way off the mark. The kindly gent saw me off after calling an auto and not just that, he negotiated a fair price for me as well. He really did want to help me after all, I thought, with guilt (and disbelief).

The numbering system of the houses in Safdarjung Enclave beggars belief. An incredible number of wrong turns were made as a result, as my sense of direction and Google maps’ confusion combined forces to wreck havoc on all sense and sanity.

I finally came face to face with Dr. Regency, or as I realised with surprise - DR Regedency. It really was DR Regedency, not, as I had believed a hilarious typo by some Google intern. Did they mean to call it Dr.Residency or Regency? Who was DR? Questions swirled around in my head like noisy flies.

The heavy gate in front of the house (it was really a flat), was shut. It looked like it was meant to keep the zombies out during the apocalypse. It creaked drearily as it opened.

And then it struck me - the gate, Google Maps’ confusion, the forbidding exterior - DR was a house that just didn’t want to be found. It didn’t like people very much, preferring instead to be left alone.

I emphathise. I feel like that sometimes too.

Inside the hotel much nicer and I really enjoyed my stay in the large, spacious double room assigned to me. It was easily one of my best work trips ever. Unfortunately, I never did figure out who DR was. The question will haunt me to my dying day.