First few days in India

Well Hello :)

So the 11th January saw me embark on a new journey in life, I left my mum and sister at the airport and a lot of good friends a home to start my travels.

First stop was India. A lot of emotions running through my head, a lot of things I'll be missing being away from my friends and family for a long period of time, excited but nervous and apprehensive for what I was going to experience in India.

We arrived on Saturday lunch time in New Delhi, our taxi man Baljinder Singh was waiting for us at the airport with my name on a sign (always wanted to be one of those important people with their name on paper lol) 

Lora, myself and Lee waiting for the flight to take off!

Baljinder our taxi man

My mums friend Kiran arranged for us to see her Aunt to help us plan our time in Delhi as she lives a few houses up from our hotel, but as we'd not slept much on the plane and it being a night flight we got to the hotel for a nap! 

A quick nap turned into a full on sleep and we woke up at 7pm. I asked our hotel reception to call Koshi and we arranged to meet the following morning. We had room service and went to bed. 

Sunday we were up at 9am to meet Koshi and she showed us a few things on the map to do and showed us her house and invited us in for tea and biscuits, tea is exactly the same as England (I was worried :/) 

Baljinder picked us up at 10am and we went on a tour of Delhi. He showed us several cool buildings like the India Gate, the Lotus temple and a Sikh temple.

The gate of India

Lotus temple, I cut my arm on the barbed wire on the fence protecting it.... apparently it's good luck?

Sikh temple on Sunday was crazy, but a good insight into Sikhism

We went shopping for Sarees as we have a Hindu wedding to attend on the 19th and had lots of fun trying those on... but when the total came to £800 for the 3 of us, we had a heart attack each but handed over our cards.

We had lunch out in Pindus and outside there was a snake charmer... little bit scared I have to say when he put the snake round my neck and charmed a python out of his box, it was attacking him whilst I was sitting right next to him :/

After the day, we went back to the hotel room, put on G.I Jane on my netbook, ordered room service and went to bed. 

Monday saw us go to the Taj Mahal, we had to get up super early as was a 4 hour drive. We met our taxi man at reception, made him wait 40 minutes while we had  some breakfast and then set off at 7am,  he had brought his 13 year old son along with him :) 

We literally couldn't see anything on the way, I've never seen fog quite like it in my time... we couldn't see the car in front unless right behind it. So that turned into 5 hours drive but we got there!!!

We had a guided tour of the Taj which was really interesting and then had a late lunch. On the way home we got stuck in really bad traffic as apparently there were some protests going on in Delhi, so our 4 hour drive turned into 6, so asked Baljinder to stop and get us some beers. 

Got back to the hotel late around 9pm, had 2 Kingfishers each (8%ABV) chucked on some music and just chilled for a few hours. 

Today, we needed a lie in, so woke at half 12, got ourselves ready and its just gone 2 now and we're off out to get some food and have a wonder. 

Overall conclusion on India so far... It's very noisy, dirty and complete culture shock, but I've never met so many people who can't do enough for  you and most importantly, they are very happy :)

Love Hannah xxxxxxx