I’m staying right now at the Paragon Hotel in Sudder Street, which is pretty cool. Ok, it is definitly open since the 60s or so and nothing has changed since but it has a nice terrace and it’s easy to meet people. The crowd is also very cool. About 3/4 are either Taiwanese or Japanese. The rest are Europeans or Americans. You can find a lot of old backpackers here which are pretty cool to talk to. There is the permanently pot smoking 50 something American who looks like my old History teacher including big beard and glasses or the 60+ British women I share the dorm with who is complaining about the unethical establishment at the universities, who won’t accept here phd papers. Or the cool also 60+ Indian writer who disguishes academics for the lack of accepting moral radical, scientific radical or sexual radical theories …
Most of the time I hang out here with David, a 19 year old Swedish guy just coming from Thailand, Frank, a Taiwanese on his way to Bangladesh, and a couple of Americans who spend a year here to teach children.
That’s about my first impression of the foreigners crowd in India.