Culture Shock & Baboons on Telephone Poles

Delhi is like nowehere else we have ever seen, been or experienced. When we first arrived in the airport we were greeted by what must have been more than 1,000 taxi drivers shouting whether we wanted a taxi or just hurredly writing names like Smith on a piece of paper and thrusting them at us. Im not sure whether they had forgotten to write the name on the piece of paper or whether it was a futile attempt to get our names right so we would part with our hard earned money into his pocket. Luckily we had pre-arranged airport transfer and after a nervous 15-20 minutes scanning the ever mad crowd we spotted our names and made a dash towards them.

He lead us outside and once outside about 5 or 6 seperate people were haggling with our bags to earn a tip from us for carrying it to the taxi. Unfortunately for them we were wearing backpacks and thus didn't need the help. It didn't stop them trying to take them off our backs though.

Nothing in the world can prepare you for the driving in Delhi. Cows roam free on the roads, as do pigs, dogs, and people it seems. The drive to our hotel took about an hour and a half and in that time we counted about 45 cows, 12 pigs, and we lost count of people just wandering across the road. Bear in mind that this was at about 2am. We were sat in the back of this taxi looking out of the windows slowly getting more and more scared of what was ahead of us for 6 weeks.

We arrived at the hotel (Yuvraj (read review)) at about 2 in the morning and were swiftly lead to our room where we collapsed on the bed in panic and exhaustion. We lay awake most of the night listening to the Tuk-Tuk's (3 wheeled motorbike type taxi) and horns beeping and dogs barking. As we lay there we kept saying to each other that we were going to miss Delhi out and head to Goa, but what a mistake that would have been.