[J.] Finally, after leaving SA and spending some weeks in Germany with family and friends we are on our way to India to start our trip.
For me personally the trip started at the trainstation Schierbrok, Germany where I was catching the train to the airport in Frankfurt. My mom lives here and I was spending the last few days with here and our dogs, who savely arrived in Germany and will stay with my mom and her two dogs for the next year. While waiting for the train I could hear our dogs bark over a field of around 200meters distance and it made me so sad...
Okay, Delhi now!!
We arrived in this big city basically unprepared. We have not really had the time to read up a lot on the Indian culture or anything that we would normally do before arriving in a new country. That paid us back on our first day where we were about to run into a classic scam, so annoying! The taxi driver took us to a street that was apparently blocked by the police and droped us off at a tourist information place where they pretended to call our hotel (was some fake guy) and who told us the hotel is closed during the morning. We were quite confused and tired and stressed but overall their story was not consistent and it became quite apparent that they just want to sell another trip to us... All the time they were very friendly and even offered us a coffee for free.
So, we were leaving this office and gathered our options while I was having a cigarette when the next guy approached us showing us a map and telling us that we need to go here and there and blablabla... Everytime, we asked him to show us on the map where we are and where we have to go, the direction was another... Then I thought, okay, this is not leading anywhere, let me take a picture of this map and then we just walk. In order to do so, I asked Nicolai to hold my cigarette and saw him inhaling twice deeply which he has not done for 5 years!! Haha... So much for starting your journey relaxed!
We arrived in this big city basically unprepared. We have not really had the time to read up a lot on the Indian culture or anything that we would normally do before arriving in a new country. That paid us back on our first day where we were about to run into a classic scam, so annoying! The taxi driver took us to a street that was apparently blocked by the police and droped us off at a tourist information place where they pretended to call our hotel (was some fake guy) and who told us the hotel is closed during the morning. We were quite confused and tired and stressed but overall their story was not consistent and it became quite apparent that they just want to sell another trip to us... All the time they were very friendly and even offered us a coffee for free.
So, we were leaving this office and gathered our options while I was having a cigarette when the next guy approached us showing us a map and telling us that we need to go here and there and blablabla... Everytime, we asked him to show us on the map where we are and where we have to go, the direction was another... Then I thought, okay, this is not leading anywhere, let me take a picture of this map and then we just walk. In order to do so, I asked Nicolai to hold my cigarette and saw him inhaling twice deeply which he has not done for 5 years!! Haha... So much for starting your journey relaxed!
Lessons learnt so far:
- Dont trust anyone blindly who is approaching you first
- Dont trust anyone blindly who is approaching you telling you that he does not want your money. For sure he will direct you somewhere where you clearly dont want to go
- Be informed, haha!
- Have an offline map installed on your phone that can navigate you. This has already saved us a couple of times and tends to work when you let the rickshaw driver know that you know where you wanna go :)
- If someone tells you without you asking that this and that is closed, with a probability of 99% it is not closed.
- Dont trust anyone blindly who is approaching you first
- Dont trust anyone blindly who is approaching you telling you that he does not want your money. For sure he will direct you somewhere where you clearly dont want to go
- Be informed, haha!
- Have an offline map installed on your phone that can navigate you. This has already saved us a couple of times and tends to work when you let the rickshaw driver know that you know where you wanna go :)
- If someone tells you without you asking that this and that is closed, with a probability of 99% it is not closed.
All in all, 3 days in Delhi were very interesting, loud, busy, dirty and hectic. We are curious about how the rest of India looks like and are heading west to Bikaner into the desert...
The pic below shows the Main Bazar Road in Delhi where we stayed for the first 3 days.
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