India - Through Chris's Eyes

Tuesday 27th April

We arrived in Delhi more or less on time. We had a brief struggle to locate a suitable rickshaw driver to take us to the Paharganj area, where we had reserved a hotel. We got dropped off at the end of the bazaar as the road looked in too poor condition to drive on, let alone walk with two heavy backpacks.

First impressions were that the whole area resembled a building site and you had to be extra careful not to go down a hole or have something fall on your head from the numerous buildings that looked like they were either being demolished or quite simply falling down. After a walk of 10 minutes we found the hotel and quite quickly we booked in . . . to the hotel next door!!! As with other hotels we had looked at on the Internet, the rooms bore no resemblance to the pictures on the website.

A short hop across the way was a little restaurant where we had breakfast and to be honest, most of our meals whilst in Delhi. We didn't plan on doing anything too much and worked on a plan to visit some sights over the following two days.

We did venture out for a few hours to a shopping mall that had been developed by the British many years ago. It was in the form of a huge circular construction with a similar circle inside with any number of shop units.

The Indian's had got the idea any number of years ago to do some maintenance and the whole area could have been any shape you wanted, with a little imagination. Needless to say, we got lost but eventually we got out.

Around 8 o'clock after having dinner we strolled up and down the bazaar and I purchased a few items of clothing to take home. The whole place seemed to have gone berserk and was nothing like the relatively quiet and deserted area that we'd arrived at.

We were quite happy strolling around until the wind got up and nobody could see anything for the dust being whipped up from the floor. Delhi was probably the dirtiest of all the places we have been and we were back to the hotel for a shower.