Yay! We arrived in Delhi and where to begin? After being on the road for 6 months, doing some pretty extensive independent teave through third-world countries in Africa and South America, so you’d think we’d be prepared of India, right? Alas, we were still shocked. I’m going to do my best to be objective and brutally honest too. There is astounding beauty in India, breath-taking landscapes and there is astounding poverty, overwhelming smells that attack the senses.
When we arrive to the heart of New Delhi, where our five star hotel Delhi was, the air was thick with car exhaust, constant horn honking, people yelling at you to buy their trinkets. But, what was amazing was that we managed to get though all of that in one piece. Our stay in Delhi was short, so we wanted to make the most of it and we all looked at each other, smiled and decided to dive in! After we checked in, we headed into Old Delhi and went straight to the Red Fort. It’s a massive red sandstone fort. This also gave us our first taste of a tourist destination in India, it was full of Indian tourists! Indians enjoying their own national treasures.
After exploring the grounds of the Fort, we were off to visit Jama Masjid, which is the largest mosque in India. We ran into a bit of an altercation with the gatekeeper, he wanted to charge us 200 Rupees to enter, but the sing clearly states that you only have to pay if you’re going to take pictures. We won, he kept our camera, we didn’t even think it was worth taking photos! After we got our camera back, we ended walking through the Bazaars of old Delhi and we were slowly making our way back to our hotel. During our walk we decided to get train tickets for the next leg of our trip, Rajhastan. We came to a mutual decision that we won’t expect Rajhastan to be any better or any worse. That it will be what it is, for this is India.