Dehli

Dehli

Oh god! Where do we start??? I guess we’ll start at the beginning at the airport.

After getting through immigration, we headed to the baggage carousel and found Stephanie’s bag without a problem but were waiting 20 minutes for mine when we were told that some of the bags had been dumped at the end of the carousel. It was a free for all with a lot of pushing and shoving and eventually I got my bag. Welcome to India!! We then got a pre-paid taxi to the city and we were staying in the “Pahar Ganj” area of the city. It’s where all the backpackers stay and therefore where all the cheap accommodation is. Things were going fine in the taxi until we turned onto what we now know to be the Main bazaar where we were staying in Pahar Ganj. The place looked literally like a bomb had just gone off and the taxi driver seemed to be playing chicken with every other driver on the dirt track that was allegedly a road. My first thoughts were “Oh no, he’s made a mistake…we’re not staying here??!!”. When he stopped the taxi and pointed down a tiny alley to our “hotel”, I realised what the next few months would be like. Getting out of the taxi, we were greeted with the smell of urine, begging women with child attached and touts trying to direct us to another hotel- not for the faint hearted. They should send trucks of domestos with instruction pamphlets. Filthy. The whole place. Just filthy. Even Mr. Muscle would walk away from this place.

The hotel (Hotel Namaskar) was crummy but we were so exhausted that we took it. After laying out our sleeping bags on the beds (there was no way we would sleep on the sheets), we forgot about everything outside and got some sleep, glorious sleep. It’ll be all better when I get up I thought, we’re just over tired. It’s not that bad.

We woke at 5pm and went for a walk and it actually wasn’t as bad as it was in the morning. What was and still is most disturbing is the poverty. I have seen poverty in Malawi and Zambia. I have seen it first hand since I was a child but not on this scale, not on this magnitude. Children lying in urine, men collapsed at the side of the road unable to get up with flies all over their face looking like they are at deaths door without the energy to beg. There is no Mother Theresa in Dehli. It looks like there is no-one to help the poor here. It’s devastating.

Dehli itself is crazy. The traffic is chaotic and I think Ruidhrai summed it up best when he said “its like wacky cars on acid!” Hiring a car in Dehli is not an option that anyone should consider. There are cars, trucks, full buses with people hanging out of them, tuk-tuks (small motorcycle come passenger vehicle), bicycle rickshaws, bicycles, people, cows, dogs, horses, camels and lunatics all trying to move down small roads at the same time with no order and so of course it turns into chaos. Mental.

We went to the big Mosque in Dehli by rickshaw and it was a white knuckle ride! After getting some…make that loads of stares from the people around the mosque, Stephanie bought a shawl to cover her shoulders and elbows as they were driving the locals wild with excitement. Ironically, we bought the shawl from a store that also sold fashionable burqa’s. A woman was actually trying one on when we went there and she was looking at herself in the mirror which I thought was funny as they’re all black and cover everywhere bar the eyes!

We also went to the Red fort and saw the sound and light show which was a very interesting and entertaining one hour history lesson. We stayed in Dehli for 2 days adjusting to the sights, sounds and incredibly different environment before getting a morning train to Agra to see the Taj Mahal.