You know, I really fancy a curry...

After a manic day of packing and sorting out the last bits and bobs, we were finally ready to go. We said goodbye to as many friends and family as possible and jumped into the car with Stacey and Neet who kindly offered to drop us off at Heathrow. Thanks guys!

Our flight was leaving around 10pm and we arrived at terminal 3 about 4:30pm, so went through security and ate what we thought would be our last fish and chips for a very long time. It was hard to believe that we were actually leaving! We flew with Virgin Atlantic (because we’re fancy) and as we were beginning our decent into Delhi the pilot announced that it was around 11am and the temperature was 35 degrees, set to rise to 45 degrees… Gah.

Soon we were India side and looking hopefully for the driver holding Greg’s name on a card… nowhere to be seen. We rang the hostel and he appeared from behind a pillar, yay! He wasn’t really the chatty sort, but he led us across the airport to his car, the heat was pretty intense.

We’d heard stories about how crazy the traffic could be and the noise was deafening, our car alone was louder than the bloody plane. All the cars seemed to only look at what was going on in front of them and deal with that, sod anyone who is behind them, unless they’re beeping because that means they’re about to over/under take you.

The car eventually pulled up in a busy market street and we couldn’t see our hostel anywhere. Hauling our bags out of the trunk the driver set off down a dingy alleyway, dodging people, stray dogs, and lots of rubbish. We wound down the backstreets to the hostel. It did not look like the pictures. Turns out it was part of a chain of hostels; you book a room for £2 and they put you wherever they fancy. Bugger. In this particular reception there was an odd squeaking sound… turns out a pug had just given birth to a litter of puppies behind the desk the day before… Our room was unsurprisingly grim, I’m not picky but it wasn’t clean and more importantly it didn’t feel safe.

Greg suggested we get to a tourism office and book a train out to the north ASAP to escape the heat. The hostel kindly arranged for someone to take us there in a car for free, and that is where we met Raj. I don’t think it was in anyway an official tourism office but we didn’t care, we just needed to get away from the heat and the noise and that hostel. A couple of hours later we left with the next 7 months planned out for us and a promise to move us to a hotel away from the hostel.

Raj suggested a restaurant for us to get some food whilst he made some arrangements. We sat down in the air conditioning in what looked like a high tech karaoke bar and ordered some dishes. The waiter then came back and told us that what we’d ordered didn’t make sense and could we choose something else. Ah. We asked if he could suggest something, he said of course and promptly left to get us something that made sense. When is arrived it looked wonderful! We started to eat, but were then told we were eating it wrong, so the waiter intervened once again and served out our food properly.

A driver met us at the restaurant and spent the next couple of hours driving us around different tourist spots in Delhi. We were both exhausted and asked if we could just go back to the hotel now, but he was under strict instructions to keep us busy until everything was arranged. Hence these rather sweaty pictures:

After much convincing the driver took us back to the office. Raj gave us a voucher for the hotel and sent us back out with the driver to pick up our bags from the hostel. A short time later we were in a clean, safe hotel room with a (mostly) working shower, and a flight booked (for an unknown time the next day) to get up north to Srinagar.