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Published: January 21st 2006
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Cow!
One of many cows that are seen in the streets of India. Day one. New Delhi.
Wander the streets with new pals.
Culture shock is here?
Yet again a mix of emotions when leaving Bangkok. Sad to say good bye to Thailand. Excited to see what India had in store for me. Anxious because I was about to fly off to a new country that I have never visited and wasn't sure what to expect.
I once again was the last person from my tour to depart from the Vieng Tai Hotel, my home on and off for the last 5 weeks. I bet the hotel staff there were wondering when I was gonna leave. haha
I was really lucky to have started talking to Hammid at the airport while waiting to board our flight. She is originally Burmese but grew up in Washington, DC. She'll be working in New Delhi for three months and hopes to get that extended. I must admit that I'm not 100% sure what it is she will be doing there because she started to use a bunch of technical terms and I started to zone out. I think it has something to do with the caregiving field (I know for sure she's not a doctor or nurse) but don't quote me on that! After changing some money and then picking up our luggage we faced the throngs of people in the arrivals hall hoping that we each had someone waiting for us. Phew! We both eventually saw someone holding up signs with our names on them. So we said a few quick goodbyes and wished one another good luck.
There was another name on the placard that had my name on it...another Intrepid traveler by the name of Susan had yet to come out. Luckily we only had to wait about 10 minutes for her. As it turned out, we were on the same flight from Bangkok to New Delhi! What a coincidence! There were two tours leaving New Delhi with Intrepid and it turned out that Susan was on the "Slowly down the Ganges" tour while I was on the "Classic Rajasthan" tour.
The whole taxi ride from the airport to the hotel Susan and I exchanged notes on where we have been travelling. Susan has been travelling the last five months or so starting in the States, Fiji, New Zealand, SEA and then India. By the time we got to the hotel it was close to 2AM because our flight had been delayed due to heavy rains in Bangkok and then when we landed in New Delhi we couldn't get off the plane right away because of construction delays at the airport. So needless to say I was pretty knackered upon arrival at the hotel...
After a good night's sleep I met up with Susan for some breakfast. First Susan needed to change some money. Since it was Sunday, the hotel made a call to a "banker" who showed up in the lobby of our hotel to make a few transactions. In the meantime we met a few other people that were also taking Intrepid tours. Terry, from Toronto was one of them and we all headed out for buffet breakfast next door and then a bit of wandering around the streets near our hotel. There were lots of people everywhere trying to sell you everything and anything. I swear you could barely walk five steps before someone was either trying to sell you something or provide you with their tuk tuk services. Quite overwhelming and that was the first time since being away that I thought I might start experiencing culture shock.
Thank goodness I had Susan and Terry by my side otherwise I think I would have been totally overwhelmed and would not have been able to purchase a new pair of sunglasses (pair number three...) on my own.
Since Sunday was the official start day for the tour I had to head back to the hotel by NOON and check out of my room and into another room with one of my fellow tour mates. Turned out that I would be sharing with Rachel from Australia...although she's been working in England the last couple of years. Pretty lucky that we are both easy to get a long with...so a good way to start the tour!
So after a bit of a break Susan, Terry, Rachel and I headed around the corner to the sweets shop to grab something to eat for lunch. It was quite the experience trying to order lunch when all the items are in Hindi without a description of what they are. I ended up with a bowl of veggies mixed in a yoghurt mixture that was really good eaten with bread.
We wandered the streets some more and found an internet place. They only had three terminals so we all tried taking turns logging on. The computer I used apparently had a virus and I was not successful in getting into my email. But no worries. I used that time to contact the travel company that booked a few train tickets for me and made arrangements to have them delivered to the hotel.
One can only wander the streets for so long especially when none of us were really all that interested in buying anything at that point so we decided to wander back to the hotel and rest up before our group meetings for our respective tours.
Our group meeting was held over dinner at a nearby restaurant. Basically a quick rundown of where we'll be headed, what to expect and what is expected of us and a reminder of what time we were to meet the next morning. My group consisted of 12 people and our leader. So that'd be Nitin, our leader, Tom and Donna (England), Leanne and Craig (New Zealand), Shauna and Brian (near Toronto), Rachel (Australia), Jen (England), Mel (England), Robin (Australia) and David (New Zealand).
Let the tour begin!!!
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