Well guys I made it!....Alive! Sorry for the delay in updating the blog, the first time I updated my adventures the electricity cut out just as I was about to click submit ...typical India! Since then I've been up to so many exciting, magical things I don't know where to begin.....the start would probably be good wouldn't it? Ok sooooooooo....... Four and a half weeks ago I was in my boudoir back in the homeland going through a rollercoaster of emotions..I was stressed, unprepared (as usual), excited, apprehensive and basically wondering what the hell I was getting myself into!.....As I boarded the plane and waved goodbye to England I automatically knew that I was going to get along with the lady that I would be sitting next to for the next 8 hours. Gretel was her name, around 45 years old, a sculptress/photographer based in London with a 'get up and go' attitude. She seemed very worldly wise, free spirited, passionate and sported a nose ring…the word 'hippie' came to mind. This was her eighth visit to India and she explained to me that she'd simply fallen in love with the place. After having a bad week in England, burning a load of old memories and booking a very last minute flight her plan was to 'dance up high in the mountains amidst the himalayas'....'This is going to be fun' I thought.As I touched down in India and made my way to the hotel I noticed that there was a lot going on in the streets, Delhi was extremely manic with no road system what so ever, cows, tuk tuks, rickshaws, motorbikes, goats, children, you name it they where everywhere.Many many people where also covered in what seemed to be brightly coloured powders and paints, I witnessed a few small street battles on my journey involving these brightly coloured powders and learned later; when I myself just missed getting splatted by a mass amount of toxic green that the country was celebrating the festival of 'Holi' in which the throwing of colours is tradition…who needs paintball eh?!...After getting some dutch courage and sipping the local, tasty but EXTRA strong Kingfisher beer I met some of the people that I was about to mooch about with for the next couple of weeks.They where a nice group although they where all traveling in either couples or chums.Delhi was an interesting place to start my tour of the country, I boarded the local bus to old Delhi which was interesting to say the least, it was crowded with men, very stuffy and falling apart, plus there was a dispute at the front of the bus in which a pickpocket got busted, all extremely delightful for a first outing!...Walking through the small, crowded city of Shahjahanabad built by the Mughal emperor Shan Jahan I instantly noticed that I was getting stared at left, right and centre, this became rather intimidating at first but you do get used to it!...We wandered to one of the most impressive buildings and Delhi's oldest mosque, The Jama Masjid, a beautiful beautiful building that I seemed very at peace in and one in which you could see all of old Delhi from the top of one of its four turrets.In this place I also managed to spot a rather odd but horrible scene take place, four men were washing there hands and feet in the small pool of water before they walked around the building, at which point I witnessed a stray dog urinating in it from the other side and then finally an old Indian fellow squatting on his back legs and washing his false teeth out in the same water!...This possibly sums up some parts of India in which personal hygiene isn't an issue…or at the same time isn't possible or even affordable…the majority of India, or the parts that I traveled to although extremely romantic, whimsical and at times very beautiful where extremely poverty stricken.After walking through the bazaars of the old city, crowded streets and narrow alleys I stopped to buy a small packet of crisps as I'd missed breakfast that day.As soon as I'd stepped away from the shack a handful of small street children, some as young as three years old ran up to me, grabbed my arms and legs and attempted to take the packet of crisps, pointing at their mouths and shouting up at me.This was pretty distressing, I went to give them the snack when Rohan our Indian guide warned me not too, I had to carry on walking up the street with the children following behind.A very upsetting experience, although one I would get used to seeing and experiencing a lot throughout India.TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE - WILL BE BACK TO FINISH THIS BLOG SOON!