Delhi Arrival Day 1-2

So after the very adventurous driving experience on our way to the hotel, we finally made it to Mystique Moments at 2am. The website says it is in the suburbs. I'm not sure what I expected for Indian suburbs... big white houses and green lawns? No, but I wasn't thinking a slum either. We were a bit skeeved out until we saw the hotel sign. Phew. We checked in, a long process in India listing a million facts - where have we come from? Where are we going? How many days are we staying? What is our home address? What is our visa number? Passport number? Number of hairs on our head? The list goes on and on. A very long time later, we were shown to our room and I promptly passed out. Alessa woke up early and we eventually headed upstairs for breakfast. It was great not to have to go searching for something to eat. Breakfast was simple - toast, eggs, tea - but enough for us. It was then time to go shopping. I wanted Indian clothes ASAP. I had only brought 2 outfits. One, I wore on the plane. The other I packed just in case. We stepped out of the hotel and the heat hit us first. Hot, hot, hot. The smell hit me next. It smelled like every Indian man in the neighbourhood had peed all over the front step. Being careful to only breathe through my mouth, we ventured out in the direction that the hotel owner said were shops. Even though it was almost 10am, very little places were open. We carefully picked our way through the poo/trash/dirt filled streets looking for a decent place to buy clothes. After ten minutes of no luck, we stumbled across a decent looking store with nice clothes in the window. We went in and were delighted to find beautiful clothes and helpful staff. An hour later I had two new brightly coloured outfits (featured in the rest of my pictures!)

We decided it was too hot to be outside, so we headed back to the hotel. There I chatted with a few of the other people staying in the hotel. I met the friend of one of the girls staying there, her name is Louisa. She agreed to take a whole group of us out for the day! She took us to the Red Fort and dinner, and was a good protector of us as gaggles of people tried to shake our hands and take pictures of us. At the end of the night, she even invited us to her home for Easter! The day ended late and we were exhausted, but it was definitely a good start :)

Red Fort!

 

 

Our lovely guide!

 

Day 2: We woke up in time for breakfast, and booked a small tour for the day. We planned to see the Ba'hai temple, Humayun's Tomb, the parliment and India Arch before being dropped at the train station. The day was rather easy and calm, being picked up and dropped off everywhere there was no stress

Ba'hai temple was perfectly quiet inside - an anomaly in India!

First Indian beer and great food!

The trashy side of Delhi.

Humayan's Tomb was also quite a calm, quiet, peaceful place. Note the red sandstone, which is used throughout India for forts and tombs. I got to spend some time drawing here and just taking in the place.

You must pay to turn left!

The India arch was roped off for some reason by the Delhi police, so we couldn't get any closer, but it reminded me of the Arch de Triumph. After seeing this, we headed straight to the train station for our first overnight train to Varanasi!