India (1) - Delhi - No escape from Mayhem...

Mayhem   noun

• Violent or damaging disorder; chaos.
• Havoc; violent and needless disturbance.
• Delhi

Above is how I would define mayhem...I shall begin to explain. 

On the 6th we flew out of Kuala Lumpar to Singapore and then on to Delhi. The flight went reasonably well except for one of wisdom teeth deciding to shift...ouchy! I think they shifted out of fear or anxiety of the next location, India. I had heard so many stories of India; some good, some bad and some ugly. We landed at 11pm local time and passed security and customs without issue and on to the taxi rank...we got in a banged up old mini van and drove off into the city. It was here we had our first encounter of the population and infrastructure issues of Delhi and India. There were 3 distinct lanes painted on the tarmac however there appeared to be an alternating number of 5 to 7 being used... tuk-tuks vs public bus vs cow-pulled cart vs cyclo vs police jeep vs lorry vs motorbike vs us! It was like Wrestlemania of the roadways, everyone fighting for their inch of road to get to their destination 0.0001 second earlier! Finally we turned up at our hotel and was met by a guard, metal detector and huge metal gate...what have we got ourselves into! It was like Colditz, but once past the security we were put at ease and checked in with no issue. We collapsed into bed and did not stir until midday... The next day we started ourselves off easy by going to the National Museum to get an understanding of Indian culture and the pre-British era. 

The tuk-tuk drive was just as crazy as the night before but the museum was calm and was well laid out... we spent many an hour there. A combination of heat and looking 360 degrees made us lethargic so we headed back to the hotel where we tried to sort out some banking issues. This is where we met our hotel manager Vicky, he was very helpful and sorted us out with a day trip to Agra and Skype for some banking phone calls. That night we took a cyclo (crazier than a tuk-tuk by far, rather walk) to Connaught Place and the live-jukebox bar, @live, where we had a nice dinner before retiring for the evening. The next day we did some more sight seeing which included the Red Fort of Delhi... 

the resting place of Mahatma Gandhi (Rajghat)...

and the museum of Mahatma Gandhi...

  

1. The last picture shows the last foot prints before he was assassinated. The whole museum underlined his importance to India and was a great eye opener. The next day we woke up at 5am for a day tour to Agra; at 7am we got on the bus with other tourists; these tourists were all Indian though so conversation was pretty limited. I did make a few breakthroughs by sharing some food and my iPod...they were amazed by the games! After 5 hours on the coach we arrived at Agra where we were taken by tuk-tuk to the Taj Mahal and guided around the site. The workmanship and architecture is amazingly intricate...

1.  The guide was able to tell us about the intricacies of the Taj along with the myths and stone work illusions. Afterwards we got some lunch followed by a look around a marble factory and silver factory with both leading to a bidding war on things we did not want. Finally at 5:30pm we left Agra for Delhi via 2 Hindu temples. The first temple was heavily guarded by armed police (there is a lot of armed police in India; an AK47 is like a badge or pair of shoes to the police's uniform). The next temple was Hare Krishna temple; we were led in to a prayer where I think Sam and I joined a cult of some kind...We finally got dropped off near our hotel at 3am having been promised 10pm!

Our patience with the sexism shown towards women and all tourists being seen as someone to rip off is slowly wearing thin; our next stop Jaisalmer towards the Pakistan border...things can only get better outside the tourist zone otherwise we may head to Nepal earlier...

I will leave you with a Gandhi quote;

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

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