Delhi

 

I arrived in Delhi at around 2am on an early flight from Singapore – I was due to meet my two friends from home – Matt and Rob – who I knew from secondary school.

Their flight arrived at around 9 so I had a couple of hours to kill – I set up shop on some chairs in the arrivals area, had a snooze, investigated the toilets, had a coffee and watched some TV programmes I’d downloaded on to my netbook.

Matt and Rob’s flight had landed before I knew it and I decided to check outside the airport to see if I could see the taxi we’d pre-booked to take us to our guesthouse. It was then that I discovered why Delhi airport was so relaxed – to the point that it’s probably the quietest airport I’ve ever been in.

I stepped out of the airport to be greeted with armed guards everywhere and around a hundred men shouting the words ‘Sir! Sir! Taxi? You want yes? now yes?’ and similar phrases in broken English. It was also, quite cold…..

It didn’t take me long to locate the driver who was waiting for us so I turned around to head back in to airport to meet Matt and Rob at the arrivals gate. I thought this was an excellent plan, unfortunately the armed guards at the airports entrance disagreed. It was a good 5 minutes of trying different entrances and showing my passport to different guards who’s knowledge of the English language only seemed to stretch to the word ‘no’, eventually I found a nice guard who knew the word ‘yes’ too and I was allowed back in to the airport just in time to see Rob and Matt emerging from the arrivals gate.

It was very strange to see friends from home in an airport half way across the world! It was also quite a relief to be joined by some familiar faces for once! We found our driver and jumped in to our taxi and it wasn’t long before we were introduced to one of India’s institutions; The car horn.

The car horn is one of the many soundtracks of India, and much like everything else in India their car horns are far more colourful than anywhere else in the world. There are the standard horns of course, there are also the horns that sound slightly like an ambulance siren; then there are the horns that sound like they are being put through an arpeggiator, there are the horns that play hundred of random notes, and there are the horns that sound more like an ice cream van, playing such classics as Fur Elise and Green sleeves. The horn is used for everything – to say ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’, to say ‘I’m annoyed’ or ‘Does anyone have some spare garlic?’ it’s a multi-purpose tool to say the least. Sometimes the horn seems to be used for no other reason than it hasn’t been used in the last twenty seconds. The effect is nothing short of chaotic – and the effect is amplified by the driving style, no lanes, no rules, no mercy.

So our taxi drive in to Delhi was a great introduction to what was to come. Monkeys playing at the side of the road, cows playing in the road, and cars driving pretty much everywhere apart from the road. We were dropped off at our guesthouse and we settled down in to our rooms for a nap (we were VERY tired) before meeting the guesthouse manager who gave us some idea of what to expect in India and how best to get around. We went for our first curry and then investigated a travel agents to get a quote of how much it would be to get around Rajastan. We spent a couple of hours Then we went in search of beer.

We found some nice cheap beer and had a couple of drinks before heading back to our guesthouse along eerily deserted streets. The only signs of life were a couple of cows – another of India’s idiosyncrasies. They are everywhere and often appear in the most unexpected places wearing that blank expression that only creatures without eyebrows can

The next day our main aim was to go to a travel agents and try to get our trains booked. The trains are another of India’s institutions and they are the most popular way to travel. Many of the trains can get booked up weeks in advance. There are many ways to book trains from queuing up at the train station which is more akin to a riot, you can do it online but this also requires you to have an Indian telephone number and other details – or you can get an agent to do all the dirty work for a minimal fee. We opted for the last option and so it was that we ended up at one particular travel agent housed in a glorified shack. Three hours later we emerged dazed and confused but at least having booked our trains and a driver for two weeks to take us around Rajastan. Our driver –called Sunny - came to meet us and we went to the Red Fort – one of Delhi’s tourist attractions. We went back to our guesthouse for dinner and decided to have an early night as we were setting off with Sunny early next morning.

Just before we settled down to go to sleep we were suddenly interrupted by a noise like a million marble sized balls of ice hitting a corrugated roof at great speed. It was a hail storm. We ran up to the roof to see and found one poor fellow hurriedly moving all his possessions inside away from the water that was making it’s way across the roof as the ice melted. The sound was deafening and it was accompanied by crashes of thunder and flashes of lightening right above us. It all ended as quickly as it began, and so we went back down to our room and went to bed thinking – as all true Englishmen do – about the weather.

We woke up early and packed our bags before heading down to see if we could find Sunny – he hadn’t been sure where our guesthouse was and Matt and Rob weren’t very optimistic about finding him. After my experiences of South East Asia I had a feeling that Sunny would just pop up when we least expected it. We walked out the door to our guesthouse only to be accosted immediately by a man shouting “GOOD MOOORNING!!” – it was Sunny. So within two minutes we had put our bags in to the car and we were on our way to Mandawa – the first stop on our Rajastan adventure.