We arrived in Delhi, hot, humid but dry!! It was quite easy to book a taxi and find our hotel much to our surprise, even though we did still manage to get our driver lost for a while. So tired, but we struggled through and walked from our hotel in the Paharganj area to New Delhi train station and book our tickets to do the Golden Triangle, to include Ajmer and Pushkar, Jaipur and Agra for a grand total of £14!! We came across some touts at the station who told us we could not go in without a ticket and were trying to re route us to another location, and then got quite shirty with us when we said we were going in anyway, and just pushed past them!! Apparently I am disrespectful and stupid, tell me something I don't know ha ha!! Strangely enough once inside, low and behold, there was the Tourist Information Bureau where foreigners purchase tickets!!! The rain then came in as we were having our first sample of local cuisine, so we sat on the rooftop terrace and watched the storm which was quite loud and dramatic, before heading back to the hotel for some well needed sleep!
Woke up the next morning at about 11am Ooops!! Had some lunch and negotiated a deal with an auto rickshaw driver to take us around Delhi for the day, at the bargain price of 500 rupees (about £7). We were robbed, but we liked him!! We started our tour at Humayans tomb which is about 5000 years old and set in lovely gardens, very scenic!
Moving on we went to the lotus temple which funnily enough is shaped like a lotus flower, and looks a bit like the Sydney Opera House to the locals, which they find quite amusing!
We then travelled to the India Gate where our driver took photos and showed us where the bombing was last week! This gate is where soldiers come before they go to war and know they will probably not return and is a memorial to all those who died serving their country, set in a beautiful park with a boating lake where the local families like to relax and spend time together!
The temperature was still unbearably hot and humid so we were exhausted after a few hours of sightseeing and went back to the hotel to cool down and get dinner before heading back out in the evening to see the sound and light show at the Red Fort. This was not quite the laser show we were expecting, but it was interesting and informative and told the story of Delhi through the ages, as well as giving us the opportunity to see the Red Fort at night and enjoy the buzz of Delhi nightlife! To finish the evening off, we went to a local rooftop bar to unwind with a couple of soft drinks to rehydrate us as we are both detoxing for the next month :)
Our final day in Delhi was taken up with a visit to the jama masjid mosque, the largest mosque in India which can hold 25,000 people, which to our disappointment was closed for prayer when we got there, so we got a cycle rickshaw to take us for a ride as it was too hot to wait around.
We walked around the red fort for a while and then headed to Connaught Place in New Delhi to visit the park and shops and have a bite to eat. This is the modern side of Delhi where you can see the contrast between rich and poor is considerable. We then headed back to paharganj to organise our train tickets and flights for the rest of our journey in Northern India. To our surprise a lot of the overnight sleeper trains were fully booked already, even the ones for a few weeks ahead!! We finally sorted a suitable itinerary and booked our train journey from Agra to Varanassi to Darjeeling and from there to Kolkata where we have flights now booked to take us to Chennai (Madras). That sorted we headed back for dinner in another rooftop location and went back to our room to pack and see if we could manage to fit everything back in our backpacks as we have a 5am start tomorrow, just as the locals decide to throw a party which sounds like it will be going on all night right outside our hotel, live music, dancing, bollywood right outside the door!!! If you can't beat them might as well join them :)
