NEW DELHI
Trip Start
Jan 02, 2007
1
3
56
Trip End
Apr 09, 2007
NEW DELHI,
India
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
NEW DELHI (GMT +5h30)
+5h30m?! What's that all about? Now that's just being awkward!
Arrived in Delhi at about 11am after a 7h30m flight and headed straight for the Taj Palace Hotel which I had booked prior to leaving. The taxi ride was kinda similar to that big rollercoaster in Blackpool - great craic altogether! Although there's lanes marked on the roads, they mean absolutely nothing to the drivers who will make a dart for any opening they feel their car might barely fit into! I read that there's six people killed on Delhi's roads every day and I now I know why!
The Taj is a fairly classy hotel and I felt quite under dressed among all the suits and the odd Bollywood star that were floating around the place when I arrived in my best backpacker attire! The staff are all over you as soon as you get out of the cab. Fellas opening doors, grabbing your bags, a girl to greet you at the door to help you check-in, etc. All they were short of doing was wiping my arse for me!
I was fairly knackered when I arrived so I decided to have a quick nap before chilling at the pool for a while and then heading out to see the city. Due to jet lag and the residual effects of the valium I took for the flight, that quick nap turned into a marathon sleep and I woke up about 10pm! Too late to go anywhere at that stage, so I went for a bite in the 24 hour cafe downstairs. There seemed to be about 10 staff for each punter in the place, all buzzing around like ants doing I don't know what? After that, there was nothing to do but go back to bed and watch the box, so there was no real Delhi experience on day one!
On Thursday morning I got up, booked my flight to Nepal at the hotel travel desk and got a taxi to the city centre. On arrival, the driver said he'd wait for me to bring me back to the hotel and I explained that I'd be most of the day in the city. This didn't seem to bother him so I said that I didn't know where I'd be returning to the hotel from. I suspected that he was planning to follow me around for the day just so he could get a fare back to the hotel so I did a deal with him to drive me around for about 4hrs. for slightly more than the return fare would have been anyway - about EUR7. I quickly discovered that this was a much better plan - the city is really spread out and I would have got nowhere fast on foot!
Wasn't really arsed with all the touristy stuff so I just got him to bring me to a few shopping centers and markets where I buzzed about for a few hours. Kinda hard to describe the city - really dirty, really busy, mental traffic, mental pollution, terrible poverty everywhere (kids begging at the window of the cab every time it stopped), etc. The only place I've been that's any way close is Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) in Vietnam but New Delhi is way bigger and much busier.
Didn't make it to Old Delhi cos the traffic there is pretty much at a standstill from early morning to late in the evening and was very disappointed not to have seen any cows wandering the streets as I believe they do all over the old city. Loads of Monkeys along the roads though so at least that was some consolation.
Got back to the hotel for a late lunch ( A chinese! Yes, a chinese for my first main meal in India - disgraceful!), booked a hotel in Nepal for the following night and chilled for the rest of the evening.
I decided not to do the Agra and Varanasi part of the original plan, partly because I wanted more time in Nepal, but mainly because that particular week there was 75 million Indians heading to a festival on the Ganges and I didn't really feel like getting caught in the middle of that!
On Friday morning I got up early and headed to catch a flight to Kathmandu.
