Welcome to New Delhi

When we arrived in Singapore it was bucketing down with rain. We had a little over 4 hours before our flight to Delhi. We caught the skytrain to terminal 2 and wandered around and did some yoga in a quiet section of the terminal to loosen our muscles after the flight. We felt much better after the yoga.

We had a good flight from Singapore to New Delhi and arrived on time even thought the flight was late leaving Singapore. We made our way through immigration and found Thomas Cook where we exchanged our Australian dollars before waiting to collect our bags. We then made our way through customs and purchased a pre paid taxi ticket from the police booth. The ride was very interesting as our Driver and others on the road blasted their horns and swerved all over the road. He got as to the suburb where we were staying but had great difficulty in locating the hotel. We eventually made it and checked in at around 11.30pm, 5am Sydney time. We went to bed exhausted.

 

In the morning we woke at around 7am, did our laundry showered and had breakfast in the cafe in the hotel.

Over breakfast we planned what we were going to do over the next couple of days. We didn't end up leaving the hotel till after 10am, but when we did we set off for the local Metro station. We seemed to be walking against the tide of humanity as we made our way to the train. We had many people come up to us and ask if we wanted a taxi or rickshaw, which we took in our stride and politely refused. We bought a couple of single day tourist cards for the Metro @ 150 rupee each ($3),and set off to the platform. We just missed a train but they come every 3 minutes, and we managed to get a picture of Catriona with the next train.

When the  train arrived we hesitated a little as it was very crowded. Catriona jumped on and the doors shut leaving David on the platform. We hand signaled meeting at the platform of the station where we needed to change lines. David didn't manage to get on the next rain as it was so crowded but made it on the one after that. We met up at Rajiv Chowk station and headed off to Udyog Bhawan which was close to the national museum that we visited. We saw many carvings, paintings, textiles and coins. Half way through our visit we headed off to the cafeteria where we had a lovely vegetarian lunch.

After the visit to the museum we headed back to the station to head to Akshardham temple. On the way we came across a group of monkeys that had been chased out of a yard. There were about 6 babies in the group and all were very cute. David was not very happy about them because of our experience with the thieving monkeys in China so we walked passed very quickly.

We arrived at Akshardham at around 2.30pm and there were hundreds of people coming and going. We had to check in all our things into security and were only allowed to keep our passports and valuables. We commented to each other that Chris would die if he had to visit the temple as you had to check in all your mobile phone. The temple and grounds were amazing it took 11,000 artisans  and helpers 5 years to build and was completed in  2005. The carvings were incredible and we spent a few hours walking around the grounds marveling at the structure.

We seemed to be an attraction there ourselves as everywhere we went people stared at us. At one point a man asked Catriona if she would shake hands with his daughter. Once she agreed everyone in the whole party put their hands out to shake with Catriona. We are finding everyone so friendly, all the school children wave and say hello to us.

It was dark by the time we headed back to Karol Bagh and we had another excellent journey on the metro. We had a look around the markets in the street just near our hotel and had dinner overlooking he street. An excellent first day in India.