We arrived in New Delhi on 24th February at about 5am. The flight was fine and we were very impressed with the on-flight entertainment! You could choose from about 200 different films and TV shows and music to watch on the touch screen TV on the back of the chair in front of you. Annoyingly, Jane and I were about 10 minutes from the end of "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" when the pilot turned the screens off for landing - so we don't know how that ended! The man in the seat behind me clearly had a thump-screen TV, because every time he wanted to change his channel my head was propelled forward by his over-zealous prods. He was quite indecisive too.

The transfer to the hotel was very smooth. There was a man waiting there with a paper with my name on it. We got into his taxi and had our first taster of a journey on Indian roads. I sat there watching his eyes droop in the rear view mirror - he was definitely nodding off, but it didn't seem to impinge on his driving.

Our room at the hotel had no windows and the bathroom had quite a few small flies in it, which we had to wash away each time before we had a shower. We went to bed as soon as we got there, lulled to sleep by the sound of a man retching outside our door. All in all, we were fairly happy with the hotel.

When we finally got up, we walked to Connaught place where lots of touts were trying to get us to follow them to the "official" tourist information. We were quite good at fending them off - usually just by blanking them completely or saying rather firmly that we didn't need any information, thank you. We ended up having a pizza in TGI Fridays. It was the only place we trusted! It had a funny cheese on it which stuck to the back of your teeth.

After that we got an auto rickshaw to the Lakshmi temple. The roads in Delhi are pretty crazy, full of auto and cycle rickshaws, cars, vans, buses, people, cows, loads of stray dogs, etc. At first it was hard to discern what side of the road people were supposed to drive on. There are so many times when you are driving head on towards an oncoming vehicle, only to swerve out of the way at the last possible moment. Vehicles zigzag all over the road, weaving in an out of other traffic and constantly beeping their horns. When you cross the road, you don't just have to look left and right but also in front and behind you too. I was astonished when I saw an advert for a motor driving school on TV - I have no idea what they teach them there! How to start the engine and where the horn is I suppose. How to fit through minutely small gaps between two oncoming vehicles and how to emergency stop in front of a strolling cow.

After the Lakshmi temple we went to Rashtrapati Bhavan, where the president lives. There were monkeys on top of the buildings, which was really cool. When we were walking back from there, I received my first racial slur! A guy walked past looking at me and said "Chinky, chinky" ! Lol

The first evening, we ate in the rooftop restaurant at our hotel. We shared a vegetable biryani and a garlic nan - very spicy!!

The next day we visited the Jama Masjid - the largest mosque in India and the Red Fort. At the Red Fort, men were surreptitiously trying to take our photograph. In the end a group of 19 men came over and asked if they could take our photo - we said yes, so long as we could have a photo of them too! Eye for an eye and all that. It's a good photo - I'll hopefully put the photos up soon.

On the way out of the Red Fort we could hear the usual cries of "Postcards, madam?" "Rickshaw?" "Photos, madam?" Which we ignored. But then one made us turn round - "Beard, madam?" Beards?! We looked round and there was this man wearing a quite blatantly false beard. Round his waist he wore a belt of around 30 other beards. He looked at us hopefully. "Beard, madam? Only 50 Rupees" He put one on our obliging rickshaw driver, presumably to demontrate its realism. After we had stopped laughing I offered to buy one for 10 Rupees (around 15p). He reluctantly agreed and I handed over 20Rs, asking for change. He had a cursory glance in his money pouch only to proclaim that he had none and handed over another beard instead. 2 beards for 30p - what a bargain!

Jane got ill on our third day in Delhi so we didn't leave the hotel for the whole day. We cancelled our overnight train to Varanasi and our accommodation there. In the end we decided it would be just as much of a dump as Delhi but with the stinking river of sewage, aka the Ganges, running through it. It turned out that our alternative plan - to go to the lesser visited Alwar, would be the best decision we could have made. But I'll write about that next time!

Lots of love,

Rhiannon xxxxxxx

ps. The photo which accompanies this is actually of the Red Fort in Agra, because the site doesn't seem to have any Delhi photos.