India! Delhi, day one

We arrived in Delhi, from Colombo, before noon and since we were so tired from the early departure we checked into the Eros Hotel in New Delhi and took a nap before our evening tour around town. Our group consisted of ourselves and the Kerrs and two other couples who we had met only briefly before. It turned out to be a great group and we were blessed with a very good guide, Rajni, and an amazing driver, Arif. Raj was easy to understand, had more information on every venue than we wanted to hear, answered every question to our satisfaction and added several wonderful visits that weren’t part of the official itinerary. He was a joy to us and we were friends, not just clients, when we parted a week later.

Arif didn’t speak English as well as Raj and it wasn’t his job to explain anything anyway but he was a real blessing in many ways. There is just no way to explain the traffic in India! I couldn’t even get pictures that would show it accurately. It was frightening! And we were frightened! Especially when Arif made a U turn on a major highway and drove against the traffic before making a second U turn into the other side of the highway. And the other time when he backed up for quite a distance on a highway! But usually he was just making his way through the tightest traffic I have ever seen and never even scratching the cars 3 inches away. We learned that we could trust him, and we had no other choice anyway.

It was Easter week and the only sign of it we ever saw in India was this chocolate display in our hotel.

In the afternoon we visited 238 foot high Qutab Minar, built in the early 13th century out of red sandstone into which is carved intricate designs and verses from the Quaran. The surrounding archaeological site contains funerary buildings, two mosques and a once beautiful gate.

As it was getting dark we grabbed a drink from this vendor and headed to India Gate and a drive around the President Palace and government buildings.

You knew I was kidding about the drink from the vendor, right? We were very careful not to eat or drink anything that wasn’t from the hotel or a vetted restaurant and we sanitized our hands every time we got back in the van. But some of us still had bouts of Delhi belly off and on, but not bad enough to keep us from traveling.