Delhi first impressions

We are safely in Delhi, eating a meal and planning tomorrow's adventure...

Unfortunately, the trip didn't start quite the way i wanted it to... We got some of the hotel vouchers the day we left, and found that none of the hotels we had agreed on had been booked. Instead, completely different hotels had been booked, although at least they were in the right places at the right times... This annoyed me greatly as I had spent an incredibly long time reviewing hotels from various tour operators, and had selected this particular company because they offered hotels that were well rated on tripadvisor, with a decent price for the full tour.

From here on, however, things went well. We caught the gautrain to the airport and that was a pleasure. The flight was long and uncomfortable but we managed to get some sleep. We used Emirates via Dubai. We landed in Delhi at 3PM and were pleased to eventually find a friendly representative there to meet us. We insisted they take us to the tour operator's office to discuss the hotel situation and get the rest of the vouchers.

Initially as we drove out of Delhi airport onto the streets, I was pleasantly surprised. The cars were traveling quite slowly (60-70kmph) and there didn't seem to be a lot of traffic or chaos... Well this lasted a whole 7 minutes, then the chaos began :) We immediately hit the traffic, and from there onwards, it did not cease, no matter what time of day we were driving or which area we were in. I learnt a few things about driving in Delhi:
1. Lane markings are irrelevant. A normal 2 lane street will have 3-4 lanes of cars, tuk tuks and motorbikes all morphing together and trying to get ahead of each other (imagine if every car on the road drove like a south african taxi and you might get half the picture)...
2. The same goes for indicator lights and zebra crossings: irrelevant.
3. What is important, however is the hooter, and you do not go more than 2 minutes without someone honking someone else for cutting them off.

We arrived at the "Holiday India" offices, in the basement of a random unmarked building. We were met by Neha and Bhadra, and I must say they were smooth talkers. They convinced us that we needed to just relax and enjoy the holiday, and that everything would be fine. They also gave us their personal phone numbers in case of any issues. So we decided to trust them and coughed up the rest of the cash... We will see in the days to come if that was a good decision or not.

As we made our way through the traffic to the hotel, we both feel asleep from exhaustion, and decided to park our idea of exploring and shopping this evening. We grabbed a bland bite to eat in the hotel instead... We ordered the curry "mild" this time - I think we might be brave enough to try "medium" tomorrow. Rs365 for this one.We are staying in the hotel "Aster Inn" and I must say so far so good, no complaints. Tomorrow we hit Delhi hard, trying to see as many sights as possible before boarding an evening train to Varanasi.

- Nix


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