Hello! This is my first entry on this trip, in a grotty internet café in Delhi. Perfect.
I must admit we haven’t exactly rushed much over the past few days – well, we really needed a rest. After working hard over the last few weeks to finish all our various commitments, moving house to London and Wales from Cambridge, and loosing at least two nights sleep in the process we really needed a break. So we’ve spent a good deal of our first few days in India just sleeping!
We arrived in the early hours Tuesday morning, and checked into the ‘Godwin Deluxe Hotel’ in Ram Nagar – a region close to the main New Delhi Station, just next to Paharganj (cheap backpacker land), and about a kilometre north of Connaught Place (the centre of the business district where expensive hotels live). Its definitely one of the more lively areas of town – cows occasionally wander down the street outside the hotel, or bullock type things pull carts – attempting to compete with the rickshaws, taxis, and tuktuks (called autoricksaws in India I believe). Oh, and there appears to be some sort of festival on – one which involves throwing colour at people and lots of banging drums at 3am! They’re hitting them again at the moment – must go outside and have a look.
When we weren’t sleeping, we’ve wandered around town a bit too – around Paharganj and some of south Delhi. North and south in this city are like black and white. The North is much older, poorer, dirtier, whereas the south was constructed by the British (by mass destruction of the old city it seems), and is green, quite, calm, with lovely parks and some ancient Taj Mahal – type tombs scattered around. Certainly a contrast (see photos).
We plan to move on from Delhi tomorrow – not because we’ve seen enough here, but as our flight itinerary dictates we have to come back then we should leave some things to see then! We’re catching the train to Agra at 6.15 in the morning (groan) and expect to spend a few days there before going on to Jaipur to complete the ‘Golden triangle’. And then we’ll decide what we fancy doing next!
March - August 2008
Route: London --- Delhi (see Rajastan and the Golden Triangle before flying to Amritsar and Chandigar). Delhi --- Hong Kong (a short stay). Hong Kong --- Tokyo (catch the shinkansen north to Sapporo and back - with a few stops on the way). Tokyo --- Beijing (travel overland via Xi'an and the Yellow River to Shanghai). Shanghai --- Hong Kong and then hop on the ferry to Macau for a flight to Bangkok. Then travel overland to Chiang Mai, through Laos and then back down to Bangkok (to catch a flight to London for a wedding). From Bangok travel down to Singapore via Malysia, before flying to Oceania.
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