We've arrived!

Sorry it took so long to post but the Internet has been really hit or miss around here. I've safely arrived in India and here's a brief overview of what I have been up to so far.

Day 1:

Landed in Delhi at 1:30 am after a 25 hour flight from Colorado. As soon as the plane touched down I could smell/taste the pollution in the air. I guess almost half of the flights to Delhi are canceled or delayed due to all the smog. We made it though customs pretty easily and then found our bags and made it into a crowd of people waiting to pick people up. It was a great relief to see my name on a sign as I had booked a hotel over the Internet and tried to arrange a hotel pick up since getting taxi/rickshaw drivers to take you where you want to go it a big hassle around here. Anyways as soon as I made eye contact with the man he signaled for Teresa and I to follow him as he dashed through tons of taxi drivers, beggars, touts, and people sleeping on the floor. He led us out into a dark and sketchy parking lot and proceeded to wake up to boys who were sleeping in a car outside and told us "you go with them, I have more people to take." Now this raised a red flag in my head since I have heard tons and tons of stories of how the taxi drivers always take you to the wrong place claiming your hotel is "overbooked" or "doesn't exist" or any number of things just to take you to another one so they can make a large commission on the deal. After some discussion I hesitantly agreed to go with the kid and thus began our first driving experience in India. Now most people say the driving here is crazy and that are no rules just lots of horns, close calls, and praying. But I didn't find the driving here all that bad. The goal is to go as fast as you can and pass as many people, cars, cows, buses, elephants, etc as you can while honking your horn the whole time. Riding in rickshaws has become one of my new favourite things to do. Anyways so after about 40 minutes of driving, passing 2 car accidents, dozens of people sleeping on the roads, cars, near burning fires in parking lots, we started heading into a really sketchy looking part of town. The driver didn't really speak English and despite my doubts I let him keep driving. We made our way down dozens of alley ways, packs of dogs were roaming around and there wasn't much light in the area and then we finally pulled up in front of the hotel that I had booked. No hassles, No trying to get more money, nothing. I felt like an ass for doubting the kid and we made our way into the hotel.

The hotel we booked, Hotel Grand Godwin, is probably one of the nicer hotels in the Pahar Ganj area of new Delhi, which is known for is backpacker hotels, drugs, and seedy people. But it was close to the train station and is where most backpackers hang out. After waking up the hotel manager, being escorted to our rooms and given free drinks we passed out to the sounds of horns honking, people yelling, and dogs barking. Welcome to India!


Day 2:

After arriving really late and being pretty intimidated by all that we had seen driving in last night we made our way up to the roof of our hotel (where the restaurant is) and had one of the best continental breakfast's I've ever had. After looking around outside we decided that Pahar Ganj really isn't as scary in the day time and decided to jump right in and Had outside.

Our goal was to get a rickshaw driver to take us to the main bazaar, as soon as we stepped out side we were basically surrounded by "touts" offering to take us here or there, trying to get us to go to there shops etc and a few beggars. Eventually we broke through and made it to what looked like a nice young guy in a rickshaw. We asked him to take us to a hotel that is located on the main bazaar and he agreed. Now this guy was very nice and spoke very good English. As soon as he started talked about this travel agency over and over again I knew we were not going to get where we wanted to go.

Sure enough in about 20 minutes, and about 4 miles from where we wanted to be, we pulled up to a travel agency and the driver claimed he did not know where the hotel was and we should go talk to the travel agency. I argued a bit but then agreed to just get out and have a look around for myself.

We managed to make it on our own to most of the places we needed to go and decided we had a lot of things to learn about dealing with people in Delhi.

Day 3:

Woke up to another lovely breakfast on the roof and decided to try our hand at the outside world once again. This time we decided to walk down to the main bazaar ourselves and do a little shopping.

It's amazing how tiring it is to just walk a few blocks in Delhi with there always being someone asking for money, trying to get you on their rickshaw, or trying to get you into their shops.

We managed to spend less the $7.00 that day on a shirt, a shawl, a pair of pants, and a nice lunch in the Main Bazaar area. Despite that sounding like really good deal, I realized that even though my mom had taught me how to bargain hard we still managed to get ripped off everywhere we went.

We decided that after downing our new attire that we would try and visit one of the largest Mosques in India and managed to get a rickshaw over there for $1, should have cost us 25 cents...

As soon as we began walking up to the Mosque the stairs started again, as you can not go anywhere in India without attracting attention. But this time is was different and a lot more intimadating. When one of the guys asked where I was I had said without thinking "America" since that has been a favourable answer to most Indians, but after realising we were surrounded by a lot of Muslims things started to get really uncomfortable. We left our shoes at the front, got royally ripped off on the admission price and was basically forced to follow a "guide" who then charged us more money. As we were entering the Mosque a crowd began to gather around us and Teresa was force to wear some more clothing to cover herself up. Apparently during this time we were also being yelled and spit at by some younger kids around the outside of the Mosque. After spending only a few minutes there we left in a hurry.

That was probably the only time I had felt truly uncomfortable here and am not planning on visiting any more Mosques.

We called it a day after having an over-priced meal across the street from our hotel and went to bed early since we had to catch an early train to Jaipur.

Day 4:

Woke up about every 45 minutes thinking I had missed the alarm and we were going to miss the train. The sound of dogs fighting all night along with a man who screamed for 2 hours didn't really ease my fears of walked to the train station in the dark. Luckily we snagged an outrageously over-priced rick-shaw outside the hotel and made it to the railway station.

Most of the signs in the railway station are in Hindi but by a stoke of luck and some guessing we made it onto our first Indian train.

The train ride was really nice and they fed us a good sized break feast and two tea times with snacks. We saw alot of the countryside, which was gorgeous, but we also saw a lot of the slums in Delhi and some of the poorest people I have ever seen in person.

All around Delhi and into the countryside there where houses made out of piles of bricks with whatever they could find thrown on top for roofs. And those where the lucky people. Evey where there are people sleeping on the ground, under tarps, on the streets. It's really an experience to see these things first hand.

Now we are in Jaipur and about to go on a rickshaw ride up to the "monkey temple". I'll post more about that later as well as some pictures.