Dirty Delhi!!

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Hi everyone,

Nice to hear from everyone back home, thank you for all your messages :-) we will reply to emails etc as soon as we can, this internet cafe is bit like a sardine can!

Well what can you say about Delhi! DIRTY is the word! We thought that Dubai was dusty, little did we know! Within about thirty seconds of putting something down its covered in grime dust etc, amusing when its a bottle of water not so amusing when its yourself!

Arrived on Monday and got straight into it with the most hilarious white knuckle taxi ride. Like this little black mini van thing with us crammed in the back bombing down the motorway. Little did we know at the time that it was a proper txi, and comparitively luxury to what weve been in since! After a bit of searching the driver eventually found out first choice hotel which is in the proper travellers (read scummy!) area of Delhi. It was really hard to get used to begin with, simply walking down the street takes a few minutes of mental prep, cant take pics as we would either get run over or carried off in the human traffic! Has a great atmosphere though, no touristy-ness just full on India madness. Definately now into the realm of travel experience and not holiday!

COWS! Are the one thing you just cant get your head aound. Youve got knackered old mopeds, cars, people, bikes etc etc all whizzing around and avoiding the calm serene COWS! They are everywhere, if your going to live in India be a COW. People take way more care to avoid them than even a child in the street, its madness!

Well after retreating to the hotel on the day we arrived we booked ourselves onto a "tour" of Delhi the next day 😊

Heres us thinking oh its not cool to book onto a tour thats what touristy 50 year old types would do. WRONG! Lets face it for about 2 quid each we should have guessed it wasnt going to be your ordinary kind of tour!

Essentially was a tour of india for indians! There was one other (terrified) white guy on the tour with us in our baler twine rickty "luxury" and "air conditoned" bus. Led by a true wannabee bollywood star, complete with aviators, elvis quif, and oversized belt. Spoke a few words of english random dates like 1989, 1975 , 1939 randomly and also get off now 25 minutes. We found it hilarious, until lunch break...

Lunch stop was the kind of thing you think might happen in india but you dont think actually happens. Well it does! Few hudred sweaty people (again we were the only tourists!) walls (and menu) thick with grime, grease and dust. One stupidly fat head cheff throwing out stainless steels bowls of mystery gloop. My Gujart Thali was quite nice (too spicy though) Sars Aloo Parantha was edible, just. Waiting to see if either of us get the dreaded Delhi Belly from it, all good so far! Fingers crossed for the next 2 months!

Afternoon consisted of more hilarious lacks of english and fly by visitas of sights. Though we did both really enjoy the Ghandi Museum, Lotus Temple and the Palace.

Basically the tour also took in some of the worst slum areas in Delhi and really makes you appreciate how lucky we and everyone in the UK are. There were loads of people, including young kids just living on central reservations, in car parks and on the general streets in mke shift boxy shelters. Its hard to know what to do when people come up to you begging, let alone when young kids come up to your taxi window at traffic lights. The poor people here ceratinly have a tough life, and exist on literally next to nothing. All in all the day was quite emotionally draining.

Onto more cheery things! Today we visited the Red Fort which was really nice and chilled. Even better was the comedy man selling terrible fake wigs at the enterance and the fact that two guys desperately tried to get me to pose with their daughter (possibly son!) for a photo, very odd! Had the true taxi ride from hell back in an auto rickshaw, high speed swerving, cramming through small gaps and topped of by going over the central reservation onto the opposite carriageway as there was less traffic there (both closed our eyes about then!). Only 50p though for best part of half hour hell trip/entertainment. Video when we get home.

Anyhow must get off now, we are off to do the Taj Mahal thing tommorow at agra and after that onto the Ranthambhore national park for a night or two so probably wont update until Jaipur in a week or so.

Sorry again for not replying to some emails, we will reply at the same time as we next update!

Miss you all loads, bed now for 5am start tomorrow!

All our love,

Dean & Sar.

xx


PS Yes we are going to try and continue the title theme of using the first letter!

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Comments

[Sanjay R]

Thats not the parliament
Thats not the Indian parliament. Thats either south block or north block. They are secretariat buildings where four major ministries have their offices.