24 September - Day 1.....

OH. MY. GOD!!! That is the first thing we will say about Delhi!!

We arrived at 11am (Delhi time). Took us about half an hour to get through immigration. So far it we hadn't noticed anything different, just a nice normal airport, I think we were expecting there to be cows and all sorts when we got off the plane - so far so good - no cultural shock yet! Luckily our pre-arranged taxi driver was waiting for us in the arrivals lounge and we followed him outside and that's when the heat hit us like a smack in the mouth - none of us had ever felt heat like it!

From then on it was one shock to another. Literally three steps out of the airport there was this dead dog just lying in the middle of the pavement (or dirt track) where all young children were just playing around it, poking it etc - we sort of just stepped over it. There was LOADS of people just outside of the airport just standing around I don't think they were waiting for anyone, god knows, it was hard working getting through them all with our rucksacks on especially because they were frozen still just staring at us (I reckon we should have topped up on the fake tan before we left the UK, honestly the light was refelcting us, maybe we might have blended in a tiny bit that way!).

Our taxi ride from the airport to the hotel took about 40 minutes and that route in itself was an eye opener! From people just lying in the road, kids (and I mean like 2 year olds) just walking on their own on the road, VERY overcrowded buses, cars that should hold 5 people but were holding at least 10 people, buses, bikes, cars and rickshaws coming at you from all directions beeping and honking the horns at you - everybody is in a rush - men on push bikes carrying at least a car boots worth of stuff on the handle bars!!! One man was balancing 5 metal gas cylinders on his bike and was just riding along with it - he was thin as a rake so how he had the muscle to do that I do not know, especially inthat heat! One motorbike (well moped really) we saw had the driver, a women and two children on it (a baby and a toddler) plus extra baggage on the motorway!! Madness!!

Once we got to our hotel (which was quite nice) we were shown to our rooms, etc. We realised that use of the swimming pool was complimentary and Kay hadn't bought her swimming costume so we dicided to walk into Connaught Place which is the main shopping area in New Delhi...... BAD MOVE!!!!!!

OH. MY. GOD!!! (That's all we've been saying since we got here!) Straight away we went the wrong way, typically, and we ended up in some HELL HOLE of poverty, dirt and people who were all "trying to help you" and "didn't want your money" - yeah right!

Us being us were like oh how friendly people are actually trying to help us (honestly though they were so nice - brilliant actors!) so we followed this man who was particularly nice (whatever) to a so called "tourism department" where he said they could guide us in the right direction to this Connaught Place. Once we were inside we were being offered all sorts of tours, trips and sightseeing packages all at apparently "discouted prices" but oh yeah we had to pay upfront, blah, blah, blah - they wouldn't let us leave for ages and it was really intimidating and quite scary. We stuck to our guns (just about) though and didn't buy anything and they let us go.

We then tried to head into Connaight Place which we realised was actually just across the road ha! Oh crossing the road was an experience in itself!! We found an area which looked like it was shops from a distance only to realise that they were either empty or completely run down (I mean like rubble). By this time we had loads of people flocking us, starting at us, trying to get us to buy things, trying to get us into their taxi, it was horrible, everybody was so close to us it was hard to move or even breathe!! Then Anth spotted a sports shop that was still in one piece and we headed there straight away - I got a costume and then we had to face going back outside ARGH!!

Just to rub it in, every bloody demolished building looks the same by the way so naturally once we stepped outside the sports shop we couldn't work out which way we had come from and how to get back to the hotel. So like true tourists we pulled the map out - another bad move.....

A man who seemed 'nice' asked us where we wanted to go so we told him (afterwards we realised we shouldn't tell people we are going to a 5 star hotel, they automatically think you are rich, therefore a mug too) he called down a rickshaw for us and said this was the best way to get there. So we thought fine.

Now the rickshaw man had driven over from the other side of the road how the hell were we meant to know that he actually knew the 'nice' man so he jumped in the rickshaw with us. So now there were four of us in this taxi thing. Not good....

The walk from the hotel took us about 15 minutes so when we had been in the taxi for about half an hour we started to, well s*** it abit. They were both being really friendly, "you look like movie stars" they were saying and they loved Anthony's hair! They were going on and on "welcome to my India" and all that, then they started saying we will take you to a proper tourism department where you can get train information, etc which we didn't even want and certainly didn't ask for! We were saying no, no, NO! They didn't listen and we ended up in some back alley place. Again we didn't fall for buying anything and managed to leave now properly scared - we were in the middle of nowhere so had to get back inthe same rickshaw and really asked him nicely could he take us back to the hotel - which he did (thank god) but then he was saying that he wanted GBP20.00!! Er no, we only had 500rupees on us so we just gave him that which is still about GBP6.00 so he did quite well considering that trip should only cost about 50p! We didn't care though and just wanted to be back inside our hotel!

We spent the rest of day/night in the hotel trying to comes to terms with the sheer madness of this wierd place! We can safely say that our first day of travelling has been truely mind opening, frightening but an experience none-the-less. We aren't going to let it duant the rest of our time here or the rest of travels and have actually been laughing our heads off about now!! What a bizarre place!