Life as a high class escort

I arrived back in Delhi from Pushkar on Monday morning. I went straight to the hotel that Dhondup owns, where he lives in the "penthouse suite", which in India means something like a middle-rate studio apartment. It was about 7 AM and I asked the woman at the front desk to call his room, which she did hesitantly, only because she knew I was a friend. Normally the rule is not to wake him, especially after he's been out partying, which he had been the night before. I walk up to his room. He meets me in the hallway outside and says "Don't be surprised, there's a girl in here but she's leaving now." Amused, I go in to find an embarrassed-looking Tibetan woman clammoring for her shoes.

A little background on Dhondup: he's essentially the Tibetan version of Chuck, my landlord in DC. He went to high school and college in the states, comes from family money, and owns a travel agency and hotel. My friend adriana met him a couple years ago, when she was staying at his hotel during her yearly trip to India. He took her out to Delhi's finest places, and since then acts as her general hookup for all things India. He's a good person to know, for access to travel deals and good parties. He's dated a few American women, and some British ones, and currently has a girlfriend from Singapore (who he assured me he didn't cheat on that night, as the Tibetan girl only slept there and he couldn't remember her name when he woke up in the morning). I find all of this pretty hard to believe, as he's a pretty unattractive person. But, stranger things have happened, I guess.

I was meeting up with Dhondup so he could arrange my travel to Dharamsala. When I got there that morning, he told me he was coming up with me, and we would take his car (with a hired driver, of course - only the best.) He said we'd leave around 10 AM, which would get us up to Dharamsala by evening. I showered (in his bathroom with no door and no shower curtain) and then went downstairs to his restaurant for some tea. Around 11:30, i called his room to see what was going on. He was getting ready and just had a couple work things to do before we left. This turned into about 3 hours of me sitting with him at a table in the restaurant, while he yelled at an Indian phone company worker, then he yelled at one of his staff, meanwhile answering the phone every 2 minutes to yell at other people, all flowing between Hindi, Tibetan, and English like it was all the same language.

I learned that one of his errands for the day was to give 2.5 million rupees (that's about 60K dollars) in cash to some man who was bringing it to Nepal for him. The man wouldn't come to the Tibetan settlement because he said "it gets raided all the time", for which Dhondup called him a pussy. So instead we had to go meet him somewhere else, a trip I was nicely dragged along for. We get into one of Dhondup's cars and the driver takes us to a hotel that's only for Indian elected officials. Dhondup's friend, a former state cabinet minister, was staying there and was somehow involved in this brokered deal. Dhondup introduced me as his "Charlie's Angel". I sat there and chatted with them, then these two Indian men come in - dorky looking and really nervous. Dhondup closes the curtains, then opens his laptop bag, which is filled with stacks of bills. he puts them on the table. The men count the bills. He opens another back, takes out another bunch of stacks, and does the same. This goes on two more times, all while we sit there making boring conversation and I'm seriously wondering if I've been dropped into the Indian twilight zone. Finally, they finish and we get on our way back to Dhondup's hotel.

We switch cars and drivers and set off for Dharamsala, stopping first at the gas station across the street. The driver backs the car into an Indian guy's car, for which the Indian man pulls him out of the car by his collar and screams at him. We park the car to wait for another driver, while that one stays behind to wait for his boss to straighten things out. While we're waiting in the backseat, Dhondup asks if he can put his head in my lap, because some staff member of his is across the street and he doesn't want his staff to gossip about him. I'm reluctant, as Dhondup has already proven himself to be exactly like Chuck by hitting on me every 5 minutes and even proposing a marriage of convenience (something Chuck does about once a week). Finally, by about 8 PM, we set off.

Because we left Delhi so late, Dhondup says we'll stop for the night in Chandigarh, a city about halfway to Dharamsala. There's a five-star hotel there where he's arranging to have a tourist group stay soon, and he wants to show his face there and have a look at it. He books one room for both of us. Somehow I didn't get the message that Adriana's "Dhondup will take care of you in Delhi" meant I'd have to share a bed with him in Chandigarh - but I'm a big girl, I can take care of myself, and despite being creepy he's really harmless.

It takes about 5 hours to get to Chandigarh, during which time we smoke a joint in the backseat of the car and I try my best to sleep - mostly just to avoid conversation. We arrive in Chandigarh, where the hotel staff gives me looks like I've been paid to spend the night with this man, and I don't speak to anyone because they're all talking in Hindi and I can't understand. We get to the room, order room service for dinner after not eating all day, and i go straight to bed after giving him a stern warning not to try anything. I actually slept well, despite the fact that i was curled up so close to the edge of the bed that I almost fell off.

The next morning, we set off for Dharamsala. We stopped at a restaurant on the highway where this same tourist group would be eating lunch on their trip - also to show face and take a look around. So again, being the arm candy for the day, I sit there in silence while Dhondup shmoozed the manager (who was drunk by 1 PM) in Hindi. For the most part, the only thing I could understand was the word "madam" which they used to refer to me. In India, it's normal to refer to a woman as "madam", but in this instance it just worsened the situation.

We go outside and get in the car, where a group of young Indian teenage boys is sitting around. They made a comment in Hindi, asking how much I cost. Dhondup made the driver stop in front of them so he could yell at them - not to say "you shouldn't talk about women like that", but to say "Do you know who I am? I'm a friend of the manager's". Thanks Dhondup.

So, thoroughly embarrassed and eager to regain my autonomy, I told Dhondup I just wanted him to drop me off at the bus stand in Dharamsala and I'd take care of finding a room for myself. He said I should stay with him until Sarah and Adriana come up - and without allowing the vomit in my throat to escape my mouth, I politely refused. We got to Dharamsala finally, he dropped me off, and immediately everything changed.

Dharamsala is amazing. I forgot how much I feel at home here. I've had a busy two days, seeing friends everywhere and having a million cups of tea and great conversations. It's amazing how easily i just fell back into being here like no time passed. But I'll write about it all in another post. For now I'll just add "two days as a high-class escort" to the list of really fucking strange things that happened in India.