I've been in Delhi for a little over one day now. My expectations of India were met in one respect: it's not a place that you can easily sum up in words. To even begin to understand it, you have to experience it. I'm not even sure I'll be able to grasp it after six weeks here, but at the moment I'm fascinated by the place and I can't wait to find out more about it.

The first thing about India that struck Chris and me on our first night in Delhi, more even than the poverty and the filth, is the crowds. Today we visited the Jama Masjid, India's largest mosque, and on our way back through the Muslim district of Old Delhi we almost had to wade through a coughing, spitting, seething mass of human beings, bicycles, mopeds, cows and rickshaws, all fighting for the same dirty patch of road. Someone we met in Thailand told us that being in India is like being at a football match, and he wasn't wrong. Bangkok now seems like a distant memory, a mythic vision of civilisation, and it's hard to believe only six days ago we were relaxing by the sea on Ko Tao.

We flew from Bangkok late on Tuesday evening, transiting via Colombo. We had about 16 hours in Colombo between waiting for our connection to Delhi and ended up spending the night in the departure lounge of what looked like the world's smallest airport (a mere 13 gates), but, ironically enough, we didn't actually have time to do anything in Colombo. The airport bus took over an hour and a half to reach the city centre, so my main recollection of Sri Lanka is one of bad traffic and ridiculously dangerous driving.

While we've been in transit, more or less cut off from the media world, some unpleasant things have been taking place in Nepal. Two days ago, the Nepali king dismissed the government and took personal control of the country. A state of emergency has been declared, the army is on the streets of Kathmandu, and I've even heard rumours that the border with India has been closed and all flights cancelled. We had planned to travel to Nepal more or less straight away, probably breaking our journey in Agra and Varanasi, but in light of this news we'll go to Rajasthan, the desert state of western India, now and see how the situation in Nepal develops.

Delhi has turned out to be colder than I expected - it was 13C when we landed at seven yesterday evening - so heading for the desert might not be a bad move. All we need to do now is figure out how India's trains work.