Scary Crazy Delhi!

I'm writing this while lying on a comfy bed, surrounded by pillows, Tara snoozing away beside me, air conditioning fan whirring away above my head and HBO on the TV, yet this is NOT how our Delhi experience started!

We arrived on Friday after a long day of being ferried halfway around the world by Finnair, who rock by the way, to be picked up at the airport by a young boy who had the courtesy to wait about an hour for us as our plane was delayed. All seemed to be ok, the people were different and it seemed quite densly populated, but it was so far so good. Then the car arrived to bring us to our hotel. An old small Suzuki van, very similar if not the same as the one Richard Hammond rolled over in on Top Gear once, with no seat belts and a general look of filth about it. We plonked our bags into the boot, and climbed into the back seat. Then we hit the roads into Delhi itself, and by god are they mad!

There are road markings very similar to home, traffic lights, pedestrian crossings and the like, but these all seem to be for show. Although the cars are right hand drive like in Ireland and the UK, they don't exactly drive on the left side of the road. They drive . . . wherever they fit. If the road markings indicate 3 lanes of traffic, it is more likely to be 4 or 5 with the rickshaws, tuk tuks and endless motorcycles clogging up any empty space in traffic. Cars don't exactly follow the markings either, and your more likely to be driven down the middle of the road than any one side of it. As you can imagine darling readers, this can be quite disconcerting for a pasty white couple from Ireland who just spent 17 hours travelling across the globe!

So we were driven along the chaotic roads, past many strange and wonderful looking buildings, but couldn't help but notice the general look of delapidation and disrepair about the place. Then we moved away from the wide motorway-like roads and onto a very narrow, very very packed dirt track. I hesitate to call it a road, as there is nothing road-like about it. We drove only a short distance, but managed to see many people wander about the car and sitting outside closed shops and stalls, dogs in the streets eating whatever they find, and the odd cow here and there snoozing in the square or walking along beside the car. As we entered this place of madness, we hoped that we were coming out the other side, but it was not to be. The Vivek Hotel was slap-bang in the middle of the 'Main Bazaar' (which isn't very main, as it doesn't appear on any of the maps we found) and were ushered inside, away from the dirty busy street outside. We were checked in, asked to pose with our passorts in front of the only CCTV camera I've seen in India, and shown to our room. Two very scared and very fragile Irish folk had just been left to fend for themselves in crazyville.

We slept most of the day, jet lagged and terrified, and woke around 5pm to a noisy street outside and heavy heat in the room. After getting dressed and washed (in the best way we could), we decided to venture upstairs to Sam's Cafe on the roof. What we were greeted with was more welcoming, seeing a few westerners and other backpackers dotted around the cafe helped ease our minds about surviving this place. We sat down, were presented with a menu, and realised that food here was very similar to anywhere else in the world. We ate, felt better, and then checked out the street below from the safety of the balcony above. What we saw here helped raise our spirits, if only slightly. The shops and stalls which had been shut and vacant looking early that morning were now open, bustling with people in fabulously coloured clothes, with the entire street around them illuminated by generator driven floodlights and candles. It looked like any normal busy street market, so we decided a small adventure to the end of the street and back was in order.

So we left the relative safety of the hotel, and into the streams of traffic which filled the streets. We walked along, a close hand and eye on our valuables, and discovered that this terrifying-at-first-glance place was actually much friendlier than we thought. We were called at as the traders tried to sell us various wares, from cigarettes to western food, and stared at from time to time, but we managed to make it to the end of the road without being robbed or murdered! With a small sense of accomplishment about us, and a slight bravery boost, we turned back, but waltzed right past our hotel and onwards to the other end of the road. We got our bearings, and even decided to buy an old Lonely Planet book on India from one of the stalls. Armed with the tools needed to plan the next few days, we decided to head back to our hotel room for some r'n'r.
Still scared, but fed and rested, we decided to try plan the next day and get some more sleep to combat the inevitable jet lag. After deciding on some of the sights we wanted to take in, we head to bed, only to discover that the heat made it almost impossible to rest. We stuck it out, and finally drifted off to sleep.