Delhi

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Well....we arrived in Delhi safe and sound last night, after a pretty uneventful flight (bar the sick mother/baby who had to be removed by security from the plane before leaving Vienna) and all was going well: our baggage had arrived and the hotel transfer was there to greet us. The drive to the hotel was pretty hairy to say the least! The roads here are utter chaos - there are at least four lanes of traffic on a two lane road, there are cars, motorbikes, rickshaws and pedestrians coming at your from all angles (not to mention the dogs, pigs and cows!), traffic lights are ignored and everyone is continually beeping everyone else just for the hell of it!

Anyway, we arrived at our hotel (Sun City) at about 1.30am and were told that there were no rooms available so they were going to take us to another (supposedly better) hotel round the corner. We'd just read about these kinds of scams in our lonely planet guide so were very dubious but didn't have much choice. But the hotel they took us too (the Ashu Palace) was not too bad, the room is pretty spacious and there's hot water (although Dan took a cold shower this morning thinking there's was no hot water when he'd actually not turned the hot tap on!). So we decided to stay here and had an ok nights sleep, though its not exactly quiet around here! (Some fool decided to blow a whistle every 30 seconds throughout the night...not amusing unless you're one of the stray dogs camped outside the hotel that also joined in!)

Needless to say we survived the night and were ready to hit Delhi (well, let Delhi hit us!) at 11 this morning until we were informed that we might not have a room for the night, nor the next 3 nights which we had already booked and paid for....Not good! So this morning's priority was now to find somewhere else to stay....which was not as easy as it sounds!

First stop was food. We were both super hungry after the naff plane food from yesterday and decided to break ourselves into Delhi-life gentley by going to Pizza Hut 😊 in Connaught Place. We plodded around here for a bit taking in the atmosphere (which is just undescribable!) and looking for a hotel; however they were all extremely shabby so we headed out to the Diplomat Enclave to see if we could get somewhere more decent there. The rickshaw rides were certainly an experience! But fun as well and definitely the best way to get around.

I took a bit of a liking to the Diplomatic area so we stayed around here for a while and visited Dan's Uncle Paul's old house....well, the building site where it used to be. Next we headed to Modern Bazzar where we chilled out for a bit before having dinner at TGI Friday's (Slowly does it, let's not run before we can walk!)

We ended the day with a trip up to the President's Palace which looks awesome at night and had a look at India Gate. Finally we returned to our hotel to find that we do have a room for tonight but it looks likely that we'll be moving on again tomorrow....'Expedia have over booked' is the explanation but who knows!?!. So we've got to wait until tomorrow to find out if we have the room here or not....

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Comments

[Ma]

Made us chuckle
Sorry Dan couldn't help it but liked the bit about the cold shower.

[Gem]

Hey Guys, Really pleased to hear that you got there safely! Sounds like you are having a good time, even if it has been a little eventful. Have a fab New Year's celebration. Lots of love xxx

[Dan and Dani]

Hey Gem
Was great to hear from you. Hope uni's going well. Keep in touch!

[Phil]

Good to catch up on your travels
Hi Dan and Dani, we are missing you guys so much... the neighbourhoods not the same without you. Great to hear about your travels so far... not got spicy with the food yet we see - good idea! Love P+T p.s. Rusty is really missing the girls...