Vibrating toy snake from Delhi? Hmm . . .

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Well what a hectic few this has been! After landing in Delhi on Thursday, I was picked up by family over here in Delhi. It’s absolutely crazy outside of the airport. Even though I have been here before, it still didn’t fail to stun me . . .the dust, the traffic the beggars and most of all the driving!

I spend the last couple of days getting acclimatize to the culture again and the driving. We were sharing lane space (actually there is no concept of lanes here) with men on bikes with extremely long ladders as well as the normal cars (filled with families of at least 10 members) motorbikes (with family of 4) and of course the cows - so random yet so true of everyday life!

I met up with some fellow backpackers that I met in the UK and we strolled around Connaught place - like (Piccadilly Circus but only bigger and crazier. The re are many expensive emporiums/shops which is so not worth it if u jut want some basic Kurta tops and scarves which we wanted. Janpath Market ( Block N on Janpath Road) was the place for this so we headed on what seemed an easy walk to the market. Yet we couldn’t find it and when 4 girls not from India look slightly confuses, the radars on the touts and locals is switch on and they home in on us . . .hoping an waiting that we will part with our money for giving the wrong advice! But it was an experience and after being frightened for all of 10 minutes we quickly learnt how to stand our ground and get rid of unwanted attention!

On Friday, my cousin kindly took us to the Ministry of Sound in South Delhi. . . ( TA Ashu!)Yes that’s right! There is a Ministry of Sound here in the form of a large glass pyramid which I can just imagine would look awesome in the day! The club and night was fantastic, playing a mixture of current house and Hindi music. Drinks were cheap and you could buy a band for 1000 rupees that would provide you with unlimited drink all night!

Today I was back at Connought place after h the girls had a horrendous experience at New Delhi station trying to book us tickets to Agra then onto Varanasi but there was no joy - just lots of hassle so we decided to go and find the government approves tourism offices.

After an hour of negotiating our way through the roads, subways and people trying to flog vibrating snakes to us, we managed to find the place and booked our tours for the next week. We found the place from a great act of kindness (in my eyes anyway) of this gentleman who was crossing the road with us and realized we were lost. He worked for the government anyway and took us to the tourist office. All the time we were walking with him, I was skeptical about what he wanted in return, based on the past experience that day, and as a result, was rather rude to him. But thankfully the place he took us to wasn’t commissioned by anyone except the government which makes it relatively trustworthy. It was a great relief to finally know that we have something booked for the week and seeing many places. Our route is as follows:

Private car (with driver at disposal) Delhi to Pushkar - Jaipur - Agra. The train from Agra to Varanasi , Varanasi to Gorakpur so we get to Nepal across the border. We then tried to find Janpath Market again and after yet another trek and hassle, coming out of the subway with me being a complete stroppy cow, I saw the market lights across the road,. My face lit up! I found it! I have been to this market before on my last visit 4 years ago but I have my aunt and cousin taking me as they knew where to go! The market is a great place to get you bargaining skills developed. I managed to buy a few Kurta/Tunic tops for 100 rupees down from 450 rupees, using as many tactics as possible e.g. I am a poor backpacker and I’m on a daily budget so can’t be above 75 rupees. Or I just I just say 100 rupees or nothing and walk off and they tend to follow me saying it’s a deal!! It’s a lot of fun. If you keep it clean and relaxed, it’s a lot of fun. Get aggressive with a bad tone then you will get no where.


The next 2 weeks of traveling is going to be an interesting journey so keep posted for the many moments of spazzness !!!! I do hope to go to Darjeeling from Nepal or alternatively do the Himachal Pradesh area but that is further down the line!

My travel adventure really does start tomorrow when we leave Delhi!!!! This whole blog thing does take a bit of time to write so will be updating this in a couple of days. Let me know what you thought of my first blog in India!!

Bye for now!


Dee

xxxxxx
P.S. trying to upload piccies but it's not happening - will try again soon!

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