Delhi – And so it begins
Wednesday, March 8th, 2006Before I tell all about Delhi, I need to go back to yesterday when I took my flight out. In classic Suze style, I’d left so much stuff until the last minute. I was packing up my house until 10pm, then had to go and drop the keys off at the Estate Agents after that. By the time we were back at Mum’s and had put the last of my stuff in the loft (giving me a chance to road-test my new head torch, miner-style), it was midnight, by which time I’d pretty much decided not to go to sleep. All of you who know how much I need my 8 hours per night will now be guffawing into your coffee.
I packed the last of my stuff in my rucksack, ignoring the fact that it’s waaay too heavy (it’s sure to get lighter as I’m using all my toiletries, right?), and then dozed on the sofa for an hour, waking up every 10 minutes in a panic that I’d missed my alarm.
We got to the airport in good time, which for me means about 4 hours to spare, checked in and had a last cup of coffee with mum. I’ll spare you all the emotional details of the goodbye, suffice to say I cried pretty much all the way onto the plane, all the way to London, and on to the plane at Heathrow, then intermittently all the way to Delhi. Like the grown-up globetrotter I am!
Sat next to a nice guy on the plane, who was telling me all about his son’s gap year that turned into 5 years. (Aunty Rosemary, maybe you should forget I just said that). Unfortunately, as well as being nice, he also had huuuuge elbows that kept getting me in the kidneys (are the kidneys on the right hand side of your body? JP please confirm). They also kept changing the channel on my tv set, but every time it happened he seemed genuinely surprised although I kept pointing it out to him. Politely of course, I’m still evah so British.
We were delayed both at Heathrow and then waiting to dock/berth/park/whatever the plane term is, so it was pretty late by the time we were through immigration. I got talking to some friendly people in the queue, two German guys and a French girl, and we were going to share a taxi if our pre-booked transfers had gone because we were late. Fortunately mine was there, as was the guys’, but unfortunately we left without having a chance to get to know each other. The guys are going to Agra on Saturday, same as me, so we might well bump into each other there.
I finally got to the hotel at 4am Delhi time, after seeing all kinds of sights on the roads here – you know, you read about the crazy traffic, but you really can’t appreciate it until you’ve seen your taxi (on the wrong side of the road) bearing down quickly on something coming from the opposite direction. Welcome to India! Now we’re going to kill you.
I slept right through till lunch time but haven’t been particularly hungry yet – I think it’s the heat. It seems the height of stating the obvious to come to India and say “you know what people, it really is a bit warm here” but the truth is, it really is a bit warm here! I haven’t had too much walking to do so far – I wandered over to the train station to book my ticket to Agra on Saturday, and then to this internet cafe, but that’s about it. I’m taking the time today to plan the rest of my days in Delhi, I think I really could get to like it here. Completely insane, of course, but maybe that’s why.
Suzanne