The city is an overwhelming and overbearing litany of people and scammers and beggars and drab, dusty pastel colours. With 25 million people living on top of one another, we'd expected some shaken and shoved and the sort but nothing - and nowhere - could have prepared us for Delhi.
The Smyle Inn, our first hostel, is hidden somewhere in the middle of the weaving backstreets. Too narrow for our van, we're now jogging behind our driver who skips past wild dogs and beneath electrical vines that hang from the shrunken accommodation and lines of tiny businesses. We go over shit and stale water. Past an egg massacre from a recent religious festival. Around one corner. Then another. Then finally too many to count. How will we get back again? No time to think - step aside for the rickshaw sir. Mind the dog please.
Then, when the light of day is long gone and our heads are dizzy, we're home.
Our first excursion in the city alone is even more uncomfortable. The bustle of flesh, rickshaws, cyclists and mopeds are bearable, the hustle of numerous unscrupulous scammers much much less so.
Lost?
No. We're going to Conaught Place.
I will help show you the way, I'm going that direction on my way home. Just follow me across here towards the backstreets.
No, we're going another way.
He follows us anyway. For ages.
You want the station?
I know a shortcut, just down this alley.
No, we know where we're going.
He follows us anyway. For ages.
He even rings a friend.
You want train tickets?
No.
Station is closed. You have to buy them from me. Hey where do you think you're going?
Away.
Splash! A water bomb nearly hits us
Splash! A water bomb nearly hits us again In the same place on the way back to the hostel.
We take stock of the situation in our Smyle Inn room and plan our escape from Delhi. The other inconvenience possibly regretted? That as from 1 March 2012 only Indians can buy train tickets online. And it looks like they've bought them all up weeks in advance as well. We need to plan an escape.
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