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Welcome to 'Planet India'!
We should have known we were in trouble when shortly after entering Indian airspace our plane had some almighty turbulence. The english captain came on speaker and in rather a peed off tone told us that Indian air traffic control had let us get too close to another plane and we were left in their wake ... it helps!!
As we touched down in Delhi at 2 in the morning, we were told the temperature was 32 degrees (the daytime average being over 40)! Now we knew we'd let ourselves in for something a bit different! We had arranged a pick up with our guesthouse - Smyle - which was very lucky as the airport was very basic with no obvious way to get to town.
As we drove towards Delhi, everything was as we are now used to ... scary driving, bumpy roads and shack looking buildings. But as we got closer to the centre of the city things started to change dramatically. There were literally hundreds of people sleeping on the streets, most just lined up on the pavements asleep with no covers of anything. The roads became potholed dust trails
with rubbish piled everywhere and even herds of cows were asleep in the roads. This is India's capital city! It was all quite a culture shock so we were glad to find the guesthouse was nice and clean with working air con and we quickly crashed out.
When we finally emerged from our room 10 hours later we were informed by the staff that they had been trying to wake us up all morning for breakfast. No matter, they made it as lunch instead. After a slap up meal of cornflakes and an Indian version of eggy bread we were prepared to brave the Main Bazaar where our hotel is, apparently the backpacker centre of Delhi.
We were surprised and none to pleased to find that the end of our road on the the Main Bazaar doubles as a mens public loo with a wall they all wee up against in turn - nice and not smelly at all! The Main Bazaar is the very definition of hectic. There are rickshaws, tuk tuks, bikes, cows and cars racing hell for leather between little gaps making great use of their horns (thankfully the cows are not included in that!).
Our whole experience was later enhanced by some very unexpected rain which turned the bazaar into something of a bog.
We had spent the afternoon trying to book a 12 day tour of Rajasthan and Agra to see the Taj Mahal and other forts, palaces and temples on this well trodden tourist trail. We had decided to splurge and hire a driver and a car to take us around as we were pretty sure that this would be the only time in our lives we would be able to have our own personal 'driver'. Also the thought of Indian public buses was not welcoming. It is impossible to know who to book with as some places seem really cheap but also scarily shonky and others seem totally overpriced. In the end we were convinced to book with our guesthouse, Smyle. We are pretty sure we were a bit ripped off but felt better knowing we would come back to stay so they would hopefully want to please us. We'll see!
That night we well and truly needed the Kingfisher we managed to find in a cosy restaurant on the Main Bazaar called The Gem (it is very expensive
to get beer licenses and consequentially hard to find beer here). At dinner we were glad to find that real Indian food was all we'd hoped it would be.
As part of our booked tour we had one day sightseeing in Delhi where we met our very friendly driver and he spent the day taking us all over the place. We saw many temples including the impressive newly built Akshardham temple. It was so nice to see modern architecture going up with all the intricate detail and grandness of the older stuff. We also saw Raj Ghat which is the site of Muhatma Ghandi's memorial and generally toured the city museum, parliament buildings, parks, etc. It was an interesting but very tiring day and after being ushered into a few sites we didn't really understand we decided that over the next few weeks we would have to keep the reins on our driver to ensure he didn't tire us out too much.
While travelling about the city we found that western people were still enough of a sight to cause people to stare and want to take photos. It made us feel like movie stars. The down side
is that all Indian men stare like crazy at Vicki even when she is very covered up. Apparently the blond hair and blue eyes read western easy girl! We have since decided that we will be married for the rest of the trip as when men are given this information they lay off. It seems being together in a house we own together for 5 plus years doesn't stop Vicki from being fair game!!
So after another great dinner at The Gem and an early night, we were ready for our early start the next day to Agra.
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Dads
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Married
You got married then - we did wonder!!