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Namaste!
Sorry it's taken us so long to get anything on here, but as you can imagine internet in India has been sparse.
So, where do we start? Well, within 5 minutes of checking in at Heathrow we managed to get lost...in a lift! This did not bode well for the rest of our trip! The flight was fine (except for a lairy air stewardess and Tass' t.v. screen getting stuck on bridge over troubled water for the entire flight!)
Our journey from Delhi airport was...interesting. Within half hour we saw a dead body under a truck, cows wandering on mental-no-rules-roads, starving children, beggars coming up to the car, deformed people, auto rickshaws manically weaving everywhere and entire families on motorbikes. Little did we know this was tame in comparison to the rest of our time on the road in India!
We arrived at Hotel Rahul Palace in Karol Bagh, New Delhi to find that the trip we were booked on didn't exist. After a while of confused banter between us (who spoke English) and the hotel manager (who spoke Hindi) we managed to conclude that a) this man is a liar (which became even more apparent in further discussions with him) and b) there was a sheet right in front of him that had all the details of the trip on. That evening we braved a walk on the streets with two other people from the tour. We lasted about half an hour on the hot, dusty streets with people launching themselves at us with their products (and their hands!). We came back to the "sanctuary" of our "palace" hotel and had a beer on the roof.
The next day we met the rest of the group and our tour leader Nitin who turned out to be an absolute LEGEND! He took us on a public bus to Old Delhi. Dear Lord, how many people can you cram onto a bus without ever stopping for people to get on and off?? We got off at Jama Masjid Palace, the biggest mosque in India. We had to take our shoes off and it was so hot that we couldn't walk on the floor. It wasn't difficult to spot the tourists! We then climbed about a million tiny twisty stairs to get to the top of a tower that overlooked Old Delhi and the Red Fort. This was our first near death experience. It was tiny and rammed at the top, Tass had to collapse on the railings and Sarah had to squeeze on the ledge with no barrier to stop her falling back down the stairs. All this while people were trying to have their photos taken with us. We then met all the others and had a wander through the streets of Old Delhi and ended up at Gurudwara Sisganj Sahib, the Sikh temple. We got given orange cloth to tie on our heads, took our shoes off and went in. There were lots of people praying and reading the holy book. We went through to the kitchens where they feed anyone who's hungry. It was interesting as Sikhs don't discriminate against anyone, they welcome people from any religion, background and race. We tossed some naans and watched men stirring big pots of tea (heaven!). We then sat in a line on a mat on the floor and ate some sweet toast, sweet tea and sweets with them.
To get back to our hotel we took the metro which is the Delhi tube system. It was incredible! We had to walk through metal detectors and get searched before we went down to the trains which were air conditioned, clean, efficient and had the voice of the London underground woman saying "mind the gap"! We had our first curry (of an unholy amount to come) at a nearby restaurant and watched the India/Pakistan cricket world final. There were men everywhere shouting! When we got back to the hotel we knew that India had won because there was shouting and fireworks going off everywhere (and it's been on the news ever since!)
So that was day one, which was a nice, relaxed day compared to the rest of the tour....More to come soon (with photographic accompliment)...
Thanks for your lovely messages on the message board, keep them coming, they've kept us sane over the last couple of days. We hope that everyone is well, and that the weather is still s*** as it's so lovely and HOT here ;)
xxx
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