Discussing the ethnography of public institutions, Didier Fassin (2013: 642) has described its dual ability to 'interrogate the obvious' and 'illuminate the unknown'. The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), a large public teaching hospital in Delhi, represents both of these conditions. This made it an enticing site for my PhD research, but also one that proved particularly challenging to access. While everything hinged on the crucial letter of official permission that was eventually written by the dean of research, personalities and the establishment of rapport...were central to the negotiation of the institutional labyrinth, writes Anna Ruddock.