Ever since I used to live in India, I wanted to return to explore the parts of the country that I still hadn't been seeing. I lived in Pune for half a year, and traveled to Goa and the south of India as well. The chaotic atmosphere, all the colors, the food (of course) and the extremely generous people made me wanna go back.
Me and my partner took the opportunity to travel through India for a couple of weeks on our way from Europe back to Thailand where we lived and worked at the time. After first spending a week in the UAE and Oman we had a flight from Muscat to New Delhi. I had heard a lot of things about Delhi, mostly negative, about how chaotic, intense and overwhelming this city can come across. Well, since both me and Sam had already traveled India before, I really couldn't imagine that Delhi could be that insane. We were flying with Oman airways and I thought it would be a great idea to take advantage of all the free alcohol and ended up getting more than tipsy. It was definitely a fun flight, but not as fun to arrive drunk and tired...
After no sleep and more wine, we landed in Delhi in the middle of the night. This thought me my first lesson: if Delhi is already chaotic, being drunk and tired surely doesn't make things easier. We struggled with trying to withdraw cash from ATMs (the fee was super high everywhere), and then struggled even more with getting a taxi to our hotel that was in fact very close to the airport. None of the taxi driver wanted to use the taxameter and they all tried to charge us a ridiculous amount for driving us just a few kilometers. We tried to find at least one honest and nice driver but without success - they had all support from each other and were simply just laughing at us stupid tourists.
I'd always had the impression of India that all people were accommodating and helpful and would always offer their help for free. This clearly wasn't the case with these taxi drivers.
After an hour outside the airport, tired and already sweaty we accepted one of the drivers just to finally get to our hotel. Our hotel was a small old building on a backstreet, were it looked like it probably was best not to walk alone in the darkness. It was loud from all the honking, even in the middle of the night, and beggars were sleeping on the street.
We looked forward to get some sleep and check into our hotel. Not that we didn't know that cleanliness has different standards in India - but our hotel room was still a negative surprise. The bed sheets were covered with stains, the toilet dirty, no AC, it was hot, yeah you can imagine. From the street we could hear the city waking up in the early morning, sellers, rikshas, traffic and all the other street noises that got louder and louder meanwhile it was time for us to go to bed.
The first impression of Delhi was, indeed, a bit overwhelming. And at the same time I felt excited and happy to be back in India again.
The next day we were traveling to the other end of town to stay with an Indian family of a guy who had offered to host us on Couchsurfing. This was gonna be Sam's first time ever doing Couchsurfing, an exciting day! He's never been as keen on staying for free with locals as I have during my travels, but this one time he had agreed to be open minded and try it out. Myself I had been using Couchsurfing during all my trips all our the world, in South America, Europe and Asia, and have always had great experiences.
After some struggle to find the right adress in a new neighborhood, an old lady showed us the house and we were let in - only to realize that our host, Varun, wasn't at home. Instead we met his mother and sister in law. The first impression was a bit strange, they truly seemed uninterested in us and didn't bother to try to talk to us or get to know us. Even though I'm usually good at breaking the silence, not even I could manage.
Feeling slightly awkward, we left out to explore the city. We had some nice street food (still just waiting for the Delhi belly to hit us), chai, walked around among street sellers and markets. Everywhere we walked young kids were running after us begging us for money which always made me feel sad. The the amount of people living in extrem poverty on the streets definitely differed from what I'd seen before both in Pune and Mumbai. Walking around the streets of Delhi was like re-experiencing India again but with 100 times stronger impressions. It was terrifying, exciting and wonderful at the same time.
Back at our host family's house again, we met Varun (our actual host) and had a nice evening together with him (who seemed way more interested to talk to us than his family did). He took us around in his car to a nice restaurant and a board game cafe where they served (what was said to be) the best chai in town. A great evening, until we were going to bed.... Varun offered us his room as the accommodating and generous Indian he was (despite our protests, we had to accept it), and he slept on the couch. The issue was the only toilet in the house - in the parents bedroom. By the time we came back home, they had already gone to sleep. We had to walk through their bedroom to the toilet. In the middle of the night Sam had to pee, but didn't want to wake up the parents again. An empty bottle of water was there handy to be used, and well... you gotta do what you gotta do.
The next day Varun's family seemed a bit more engaged and wanted to take us around town to a market, a museum and a public park. We went on a real Indian family trip, of course squeezed in all together in one car. It was a great day and everyone enjoyed it. Varuns family also seemed a bit less uptight and more welcoming than the night before.
However, when we got back Sam felt like staying a second night (considering the toilet issue) wouldn't be so comfortable, so we thanked our hosts a million times for their great hospitality and told them we were going to take a night train up north towards Dehradun. Varun kindly helped us look up trains and we found a suitable night train available.
At the train station we were told that tourists can't book a train ticket there. We were directed to a special tourist office. As you can imagine, this turned out to be some kind of scam travel agency, claiming that all trains were full and instead trying to sell us other ways of transplantations such as a private driver. We ended up staying in Delhi another night, while trying to figure out how to solve this frustrating issue. At least we found a very cute little hostel in a nicer area of town, that seemed to be more of the backpacking district. They had two adorable pugs. The guy working there told us that trains in India can be problematic to book last minute and usually get fully booked. This was something we hadn't been aware of, but now had to try to solve. I guess this was something we should have expected though, doing such a spontaneous trip to India.
Wanna know what happened after we left New Delhi? The trip continued up north. Click here and read my next blog post about our trip in India.
Are you planning a trip to India yourself? Please don't hesitate to get in touch with me if you have any questions or want more advice!