2008-05-09 First blog entry

Ok, first of all this is Tim here, and Anna has already put in her first blog entry, but after 30 min of rapid typing from her the internet ran out and she lost the lot, very rubbish. We have decided to now type them out before hand then paste them onto the net.

Ok so after taking 2 buses, 5 trains and a plain we have managed to get to New Deli from Exeter, and man what a shock, its mental mental metal mental. We grabbed a taxi from the airport and took it all the way to the smiley inn on the main bazaar in the Paharganj area of New Deli, after navigating our way down the small side streets to books in and got to the room and crashed out having no energy left.The room was very small and had no air con, which we soon learnt is a must at this time of year as the outside day temperature is about40oc + in the height of the day and because we are in New Deli it is a really close heat because it is so polluted.

Once we had gathered our self's we decided to take a walk along the main bazaar and wow what an experience, it was like being at a really hot dirty, smelly festival where everyone is in your face and as you may guess it can be a bit too much if you let it get to you. There are shops selling everything and anything you want and everyone as they say is "my friend" which means come into my shop and buy my stuff, and alongside that there are beggars and ric shaw drivers all giving you hassles for your money. We grabbed some food and then went back to sleep and we slept for 12 hours or so to catch up on jet lag.

The next day we decided to go to the train station and book a load of train tickets for at least the next week or so, easier said than done. We found our way to the booking office or tourists and we then sat down and had to fill in a load of forms on when we wanted to go and when and who we where and what we did, it was all a bit stressful but all sorted now. Once this was all done we then headed to the jama masjid mosque to have a look around and it was amazing, as you will see in our pics. We had to take off our shoes to walk around and the funny thing was that the ground was so hot that Anna found it hard to walk in the sun bits, very very funny, we chilled in the shade of the mosque for a time to take it all in and then grabbed a ric shaw back to the hostel and what a ride.

The lad who gave us a ride back wanted 200 INR which is about £2.10 and we got our moneys worth, it was so hot that we was swetting buckets and had to go up a few massive hills with me and Anna on the back, at one point i was going to get off and help push because he really looked like he was suffering.

Once we got back we chilled for a time, grabed some food and packed our bags for the 6.15 am train we had booked in the morning to Agra.