Delhi: It's not easy like.

I was fully geared up for a bout of culture shock when we arrived in Delhi.  I didn't quite know what to expect, but I could guess that it would be a million miles away from the luxury of Dubai.  A couple of good friends (Dav and Althea) had shared a lot of there experiences with us before we left so I figured I was going to be pretty clued up.  I wasn't.  Even 5 days later I'm not much wiser to the way things work.  It's a hard place to be, the best word to describe it is "difficult".  Let me tell you a little story of our first day here.

Laura - Ready to cry due to the state of our Hostel.  

When we arrived into Delhi it was around 7pm and dark.  The ride in the taxi from the airport was awesome.  These taxi drivers have amazing spacial awareness.  I park my Punto like its a tank.  These guys drive their rickshaws like they're unicycles, dodging and weaving past other cars, pedestrians and cows.  It's actually pretty thrilling.  We were dropped off in a dark scary back alley and led to the hostel by our taxi man as he said it was "not safe".  Brilliant.  We were advised by the guy behind reception that it was not safe to leave the hostel at night and that his co-worker would lead us to a restaurant round the corner.  Fair enough, good advice I thought.  We ate and scurried back through the alley certain that we would be raped and killed.

Cockroaches bouling al owwa wor bathroom

The next morning the fella behind the desk made us a brew and we chatted about our plans.  It was nice.  He offered us some advice on what to do and see, but said that we should get of Delhi and see other nicer parts of India.  Given that we were living on the corner of rape alley and murder lane, we thought it might not be a bad idea.  He had organized his friend to take us out for breakfast and then on to the tourist information centre where we could gather some information and decide where we wanted to go.  For those of you who have been to Delhi, I guess you probably know where this is going, but at the time, it didn't seem that obvious.

We went for breakfast.  Fine.  Saw a temple. Fine.  Went to the tourist information office....Not actually a tourist information office but a snide travel agent trying to rob us of our cash and fly us to Kashmir.  I'm led to believe that Kashmir is pretty war torn.  When we didn't book anything, everyone was really pissed off all of a sudden, including our receptionists friend.  Weird.

We decided that something wasn't quite right and managed to palm off this "friend" and headed to the national museum, not to look at old shit, just to get out of the noise and away from copious amounts of people trying to con us out of our money.

At this point our minds are telling us a few things;

1. We're staying in a hostel in a well dangerous area.
2. The guy behind the counter at our hostel has arranged an elaborate scam to fleece us of our money.
3. We'd like to get out of Delhi, it's just a bit much for us.

To get out of Delhi we thought we could find the train station and maybe book some tickets to head to Agra. Maybe it would be a little less chaotic there.  In England finding the train station is easy.  Flag down a taxi.  Tell the driver where you want to go.  Go there.  Pay the driver.  Easy.  This is how you do it in Delhi;

• Flag down a rickshaw.
• Tell him where you want to go.
• Barter on the price.
• Get fleeced.
• Arrive at a place that looks like it might be a train station but that appears to be closed. 
• Argue that this is not the station.
• Have an "official" train station employee come to you, show you some ID that looks like it was ordered from the back pages of FHM and recite an entire page of the Lonely Planet guide to India rail information.
• Argue that he does not work for the station (although his ability to recite the text is impressive).
• Get out of rickshaw nowhere near the station.
• Get fleeced.

We found the station eventually and all was well.  Apart from the fact that now the guy at the hostel is super pissed of with us for not buying tickets to a war zone.  We decided to move to a different hostel round the corner as we didn't feel right being there.  It turns out that the area we were in is pretty amazing.  Loads of cool shops and stalls, plenty of atmosphere and loads to do.  It appeared that rape alley and murder lane were in fact safe as houses.  The whole "its not safe" crack was just part of the scheme to get us so scared that we would want to leave on the next 800 quid flight to Kashmir.  You live and learn.

So, all problems solved then, we're out of the horrible hostel and in a new nice place with this whole exciting area to explore.  Not quite.  Delhi belly decide to step up.  I was ill.  I wish I could say that the most violent chundering known to man was the worst part of it.  It was not.  Taking a fiery piss out of my arse was much much worse.  I was pretty much bed bound and had to leave Laura to her own devices.  She was a good nurse (no lads) and although she was going out of her mind, she stayed in with me most of the time and made sure I was OK.  I can be a little needy when I'm ill.

The view from our nice new hostel

Any who, I am back to good health and starting to quite enjoy myself now.  A combination of culture shock, scare mongering, scams and illness has meant that our first stop in India has been a bit....difficult. Lets hope the next part of the journey goes a little more smoothly.

Dubai : Show Me Your Normal

Well, the difficult second post.  Although I'm in Delhi now, I guess I have to tell you a few things about Dubai, or as it's more well know to the hipster ex-pats....Dubz.  I know, all I can think of is that prick Dappy from the sensational UK urban group N-Dubz as well.

The view from Elliot's apartment

Dubai is pretty weird place if I'm honest.  It has the biggest, longest, most expensive and highest everything but truthfully, no soul.  Don't get me wrong, I had a great time there but that was more down to Elliot who we stayed with.  He really looked after us.  We ticked off all the major boxes; visited the Burj Khalifa, watched the fountains, attended a brunch and spent a day on the beach.....Oh, I also learned that physically, it's not possible to hang a slip on shoe off your cock and balls.  Especially after jumping into a freezing cold pool.  That's a whole other story though.

Enjoying a "cheap" brunch with Elliot

Of all of those activities the most impressive was the brunch. In a nut shell, punters pay a set fee on the door (ours was about 30 quid) to eat and drink as much as they can for four hours.  It's great fun, just a standard piss up with a bit of food and some good chat.  What makes a brunch so special is the fact that it somehow works.  Imagine opening a bar on the Bigg Market and charging 30 quid on the door for a load of meat heads to drink as much as they could?  And to make it more competitive, lets give them a time limit.  If this happened you'd get......well......you'd get "The Boat".  And we all know how that ended.

Burj Al Arab - Being peasants means no entry

I was more than keen to get past all of the expensive buildings and cars and see what the heart of Dubai was all about.  See some real "culture" if you will.  The daft thing about that is that fast cars, tall buildings and a money driven population is Dubai's culture.  I think anyone there would probably agree with that.  It's all about being flash, and, it seems to work well for most people out there.  The lifestyle is great, living in huge apartments on the beach and making a load of cash sounds like the dream right? It's been one of mine for a while.  I'm just not sure I could hack it out there.

In the Beginning, God Created Techno Viking

Now then.  Let's take care of a small formality.

Bouling....or Boulage.  What does it mean?  Well, it has nothing to do with the game "French Boules".

Bouling [Bool-ing] or Boulage [Boo-lij] is very difficult to define. The best way I can describe it is "to act in a bullish way.  To over commit when not appropriate or required".....A bit like Techno Viking....No; Exactly like Techno Viking.

Anyway, its not too important, it's just kind of a joke that only about 3 people will get (Techno Viking is not one of them).....and they probably won't even find it that funny. Nevertheless, I wanted to wedge it somewhere into my blog and where better than in the actual domain name?

OK, so, this is my travel, food, experience and whatever is appropriate on the day blog.  I don't really know which way it will go, how often I will post or how interesting it will be.  One thing is for sure though, water is to Techno Viking what spinach is to Popeye............OK, no more Techno Viking chat, I promise.

So where did this whole thing start?  The truth is it's a bit of joke that has gone too far.  I once told Laura that we should run away together. Now, it was 100% jest, she even laughed....nervously. But at the time, in the first few months of our relationship where infatuation overrides every single rationale decision, it seemed like the perfect thing to do.  Why not? People do it all the time in those rom com's right? And, it all works out right?!  Well, so far it has all worked out, only I don't ever remember Hugh Grant having to graft his arse off 7 days a week selling his soul to numerous organisations who he simply could not give a fuck about just to run away with the girl. "Would you like to see a demonstration of the new Xbox Kinect?....No?...Excuse me sir, but you appear to have left your kids with me.......no it's no problem at all, I'll look after them while you go shopping".
I won't start a rant, but it's not easy getting out of bed in the morning to act as a glorified babysitter.  I imagine its how Jedwards agent feels, only probably not as bad.  But, we've encouraged each other to get up and earn the money that we need to go out an explore the world.  That's how things work.  Graft hard, earn nice things.  It's rewarding to have worked hard for something to make it happen.

Exploring the world is something that we have always wanted to do and finally our opportunity has arrived.  And, to be quite honest, it's brought out some very mixed emotions.  I'm not entirely sure that uncontrollable bowels strictly counts as an emotion, but that seems to be the the most common at this point.  Fear, anxiety and excitement follow closely, and probably contribute to, the aforementioned "emotion".

Still, I have nothing to complain about.  Yes, it's difficult saying goodbye to friends and family.  Yes, its a bit sad moving out of our home and giving away our possessions.  But right now my biggest problem is whether to pack three t-shirts or four and which albums to put on my Ipod.  It's hardly a bad position to be in.  This time next week I'll be enjoying the first stage of a trip of a lifetime.  Good times.

Well, that's it for the first post in what was intended to be a travel blog, but ended up being more of a random collection of mostly unrelated thoughts with very little relation to travel at all.  To rectify that, here is a picture of my room during my first attempt at packing. I still haven't managed to get the Casio in my backpack.......

I promise to make subsequent photos much much more exciting.  I'll also try to include more travel based anecdotes as opposed to using youtube videos that have no real relevance.

In. A. Bit.