Despite thinking we had the whole day to finish off last minute jobs, getting picked up at 4.30 pm by Alice's dad was still a bit of a stretch of time- I had a bit of a panic that I wouldn't be able to use either of my cards, i.e. my only means of getting cash. Luckily that got sorted and so we set off in the miserable rain, at which point the feeling of being completely overwhelmed at what we were doing sank in.

We checked in, and Paul offered to buy us our last English dinner, rounded off by a pudding. Saying goodbye to the last adult who would look after us for a while just reinforced the what the f***! feeling! Got to the gate and read a few pages of the complimentary stylist magazine (the Daily mail got left on the plane unread). We were very impressed with Oman air, who provided wet face towels, pillows, blankets, headphones, an overnight pack with a toothbrush, toothpaste, flight socks, eye mask and ear plugs (will come in useful for hostels). They also managed to make us regret the pudding we'd had by not just providing dinner (chicken curry, potato salad, bread roll and crumble for me, veggie lasagne replacing the chicken curry for Alice) but also a hot wrap breakfast (scrambled egg and smoked turkey/ vegatable). The plan was to sleep the whole flight, but it's not as easy as I find sleeping on coaches! After giving up on that idea, I watched The Artist which was one of the many films on the inflight entertainment.

Stepping off the plane at Muscat in the warm sunny air when it was only 8.30 am meant a nice comparison from where we had been a day earlier! The Muscat airport was quite pretty, and had patterned balconies and domed mosque like roofs.

The Muscat-Delhi flight felt a bit more cramped, but we were so tired that we fell asleep for the whole time the plane was delayed for; Alice even stayed asleep whilst we took off! Even though we didn't really need another meal we were impatient for our lunch of another chicken curry (me) and vegetable curry (Alice).

We went through immigration and luggage reclaim fairly quickly, and was met by the guy giving us a lift on the 40 minute drive from the airport to Hotel Ajanta. This was a good opportunity to have a look at India. I knew the traffic was supposed to be pretty hectic, but didn't realise that:

• lanes on the motorway don't mean you have to stick within the line; 3 lanes actually mean 5 cars can drive at the same time
• you don't need to look at whoevers already on a roundabout; you have to just merge with other cars when they want to get off
• left and right hand sides of the road don't give any inclination of which direction you are going in, again you just fit in wherever you can. Plus 2 tiny little girls don't get scared crossing this mayhem!

We got to the hotel, and were pretty quickly swept into the manager(?)'s office to arrange transport. Alice's friend Steve has organised for us to be able to volunteer at the centre for kids with learning difficulties he is working at on Friday the 7th Dec, so he told us a good route to go to all the places we want to go whilst sticking to this restriction, and organised the transport for it plus accomadation. Although it might have been a bit more expensive than we could have got it for, it means we get the ease of having the first leg of our trip organised for us-easy peasy. My great idea of having a secret pocket containing one of my cards failed when I realised I may have to occasioanlly use that card and get it out in front of people... He also threw in complimentary chai tea (tastes different to the stuff you get in England but still nice- although I'm guessing that will be the case for most things) and dinner. I had a non veg thali (containing two chicken curries, an egg curry, yoghurty dip, rice, veg curry, naan and a poppodum) Alice had veg thali, and we ate it on the balcony restaurant overlooking New Delhi (although most of what you can see is just hotels).

Room seems OK and clean! Looking forward to going to bed from not sleeping much today, but I think this is actually a good thing as it means we are tired at 9 PM indian time (3 PM London time) and so we think we can adjust to the time.

By the way, for those of you who have read Mum and Dads diary, you may notice I'm keeping up the high level of detaIL of what food we are eating