Well Delhi certainly is ummmm interesting...

  Delhi, India
Monday, October 6, 2008

Rushed off to the airport and got there half hour late thanks to family send off shenanigans. But ended up being nice and as two lovely friends turned up to see me off and had several friends phone to bid say bye!

Departure went well, in fact so well that I was wandering what disaster was awaiting me round the corner. To balance things out.
Arrived in Delhi airport and was amazed as to just how quite it was, do pretty much wizzed through things. With exception of the a-typical moron passport checker who decided to ask me questions like 'so where were you born' and 'You have been to India before! Did you know that. So what type of VISA was that on?'
I course played along in my usual sarcastic style and he caved in eventually hehe.
The place we are staying at is very small and quite, but nice in that way. Has a big ass 40" wall mounted Samsung LCD in it. Almost looks out of place, but we were not complaining :oP
After dumping bags off we decided to shower and wander off for some nourishment and made the first of numerous mistakes for the day.

Rather than take the metro, figured it was better to walk down and take in the sites. Hmmmm 30 mins later and having completely reversed the effects of the shower and experienced various sounds and smells at close proximity. We decided not to do that again (no shit).
Anyway, got the central area which is a very large circular area littered with various brand name shops and obviously tourist oriented to the extreme. Saw a KFC and MC lol. Decided against and carried on (potentially mistake number two).
While wandering around got approached by some shady looking guy who was well a little too well turned out for the area (going by the others there). And approached us randomly offering help...closely followed by another guy trailing not too far behind us. I decided to play along with this, until he walked us to the side street and wanted us to go to some specific shop which was apparently a Information center. My friends pointed out to me that the trailing guy was on his mobile and acting shifty.
I thanked and bid him farewell and proceeded with my friends into the nearest safe haven (a Vodafone shop in this instance). Came out several minutes later and the shady mobile phone trailer was still there, so we went into a nice plush restaurant a few doors down and lost the obvious con merchants/thieves in the lurch.
Had a lovely meal in this place, which was named the Embassador but be warned it was expensive.

With a full belly we attempted to go to Chandi Chowk via the Metro (which by the way is superb and cheap!). Had a good giggle at watching the locals being forced into orderly conduct such as queuing up, what a sight to behold.
Made it there in order to go to the Red Fort, but it was absolute pandemonium and my traveling buddies were freaked out. But we forged on only to be rewarded by the place being close on Monday grrrrrr.
Tired and frustrated we decided to take a rickhsaw back to the hotel which took ages due to a road diversion.
On the way back to the hotel Amanda took out her frustration on a the mother land i.e kicked a stone. Grand result a hge stubbed toe

Amanda and her stubbed toe

. Not a pretty sight but we were meters away from the hotel so took her back and she had two guys fuss over her like nurses (which I think she enjoyed lol).

Amanda and Ben ended up crashing out, so I ended up in the lounge typing my first blog entry while talking to the obviously intoxicated porter. So apologies for the mish mash entry :o)