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.