Hello and welcome to another blog with the Findlaters as we embark on our adventure in India.
Picking up from where we left off in our last blog we have just moved house and are setting off on our new adventures to India.
As the last blog started to get a bit longer then we had initially anticipated I have broken it up into this second blog post.
So here it is!
After everything about moving house and settling in etc. I am not sure we had time to get super excited about our trip until we were actually sitting at Heathrow Airport waiting for our gate to be announced.
Start of adventure to India - London to Dubai, Dubai to Delhi
But nevertheless here I sit at 10pm at night in in our hotel in Delhi writing this blog and the beginning of this trip.
Our first flight was from London to Dubai - A 6 hour flight that induced a mixed set of emotions. On one hand it was a big Boeing A380 with fancy trimmings and an overly generous amount of leg room. It was an Air Emirates flight, and was awesome as usual for the most part.
The flight was basically empty, so I got to lay across three seats and actually get some sleep for a change (I'm one of those people who doesn't usually sleep well or easily on flights). Kyran spent most of this flight enjoying movies as he wasn't tired and was unable to get any sleep.
The other emotion 'anger' as per all of the flights that I book I always specify "Vegan" meals, but only 50% of the time do we actually get one. In this case was in fact NO vegan meal arranged for us! So we had to scavenge salads from the left over crews meals. Strangely enough, the main meal choices were just chicken or beef, not even a vegetarian option you'd typically see these days... I could go on... not impressed Flight Center, not impressed!
Above: A garden type thing in Dubai airport
The second flight was from Dubai to Delhi, with only a 1.25 hour changeover between flights which is pretty quick. The flight to Delhi was only 2.5 hours long which was a saving grace because for some reason we thought that we were in for and other 6+ hour flight. But this short trip was unfortunate for Kyran because he thought he had another 4-6 hour flight ahead to get some sleep... Because he spent the previous 6 hour flight to Dubai watching movies he really didn't get any sleep at all. He was a great leg pillow though!!
We arrived in Delhi in the morning, and landing at the airport is where the culture shock began.
One runway was half built, there were people in little wood huts in the middle of the air strip areas (see below) and toilets with extra hoses but no Toilet paper, not to mention the toilets that were almost missing entirely!! (see Below)
I mean how are you suppose to use these things (squat toilets)? Do you straddle them forwards or backwards?
Apparently the correct answer is 'like you would a normal toilet, back to the wall'. Which I guess makes sense after I had done it the wrong way around, and spent my stay squatting while focusing on not face-planting whatever bodily fluid was on the wall.
We were met at arrivals hall by our private car transfer guys who greeted us with these awesome flower neck things which was a very cool touch!
As we left the terminal, we stepped into a cloud of smog, fog and haze, and were surrounded by armed guards and security police with all sorts of rifles and sub machine guns. Portable steel shields to hide behind, sandbagged machine gun nests, very heavily fortified and a bit of a shock. Is security this bad to merit such a show of force?
We asked the transfer guys about the security and they said it's normal, and because Delhi is the capital they are very serious about security. The government has stationed a special military group at all major infrastructure like airports to provide security, because they did a good job elsewhere in the past.
On our drive to the Hotel, we got our first experience of the chaotic life on the road and city streets of Delhi - which is the Capital city of India. Here are some of our first impressions:
Somehow, Indian drivers appeared to solve the impossible - how to "safely" fit 5 cars wide on a 4-lane highway, with extra motorbikes in between!
Poorly maintained roads, littered with potholes big enough to cause serious damage. The cars use their horns and high-beams like some form of primitive communications about intent to pass or overtake, signalling oncoming traffic, and generally communicating intent to do something. This is what happens when rules and systems are ignored, weird pseudo-rules which are unwritten, but living and breathing systems adopted by the population and widely accepted and understood by the denizens of Delhi (and wider India as we later found).
Beggars and people trying to make a quick coin filtered through the traffic in rare situations where cars actually came to a stop at red lights (usually people just drive through them), at one point we saw what was obviously a man but dressed as a woman and with makeup on (red dot on the middle of brow, lipstick etc) begging for money.
We passed a construction site at one point where a man was dangling down the side of a building from the 2nd floor by holding onto his mate's hand so he could place a brick on some hard-to-reach location! So they really must not have any sort of health and safety regulations!
After almost an hour of jaw-dropping and harrowing experiences on Indian roads for the first time, we arrived at our Hotel - a 5-star hotel called the Suryaa Hotel New Delhi.
At the entry gate, the car was searched by security guards for bombs by opening the bonnet and checking the engine bay, and by using a mirror on a stick to look underneath the car. The funny part was the dude with the mirror on a stick wasn't even looking at it, he was having a chat with a bloke in the guard house!
We got to the doors of the Hotel, and had to go through another round of security checks and scan handbags through an X-ray machine, and go through a metal detector and get patted down.
As we had arrived early and there was a bunch of people waiting for early check in as the rooms became available we decided to get some food.
At this point we were too tired and in shock to wonder out of the hotel to look for local food so we went to the hotel restaurant instead.
I (Mercedes) thought I would at least try for an Indian breakfast and ordered some Parathas - depending on what sort of Paratha they are curried veggies (potatoes, caulieflour etc.) wrapped in dough flattened out and pan fried (see Below).
Kyran on the other hand took one look at the menu saw Mushrooms on toast and he knew what he wanted (see Below).
With our primal needs starting to be met the last thing that was left to fulfill was sleep so I though by this time I could probably go and motivate the reception staff to get us a room asap.
So apparently that is all it took because the minute I asked them when our room would be ready they issued us some key cards and wifi passwords and we were set.
Straight to our room to have a shower and bed.
Below is the view that we had from our hotel room
We woke up just in time for dinner but after paying through the nose for breakfast/lunch at the hotel and with a little courage built up after a sleep we decided that the shopping area right out side the hotel wouldn't be such a bad place to adventure to.
We set out to get food but we also had a side mission to get a mobile sim card so that we could have internet while we were in India for the 12 days.
So first we managed to get the sim, which was a weird experience because our transfer guy said to never give anyone our original passport but only a copy, so we had the hotel make a copy. When we asked the sim card guys about a sim they did seem to press for the original passports but settled for the copy when we told them we didn't have them with us.
Concerning, but it was all part of the overall feeling of being unsafe and being on high alert that we had when we first arrived.
Another thing, (and you will here me say this quite a bit through out this blog series) Kyran and I stood out like White Rhinos. We couldn't go anywhere without people staring at us.
The long and the short of it was that we did get a sim that would not activate for 24 hours, I was dubious as to if we were getting ripped off, but in the end the sim did start working about 26 hours later.
After we sold our first child and our identities to get the sim card with data plan it was time to get some food, and when in India... Indian food!!! woot woot!!!
Kyran got a little excited ordering food, but he was happy and the food was cheap.
The one food that I would like to mention is the "Soya chop" (see below) it was a sort of doughy/ meaty textured meat alternative that was very tasty. I think that is was cooked on a skewer as all the pieces had holes through them. Very yummy indeed!!
That my friends brings us to the end of this blog and our first day in India.
The next adventure is a trip to see the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort in Agra. But before we publish that blog we have decided to do a bit of a summary blog so that you, the reader, can get a better feel and understanding of India to give our future adventures a bit of cultural context.
So thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next blog post!
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