October 23rd, 2019
As some of you know, India has never really been that high on my travel priority list, or even on the list at all. I thought if I ended up in India it would definitely be in the Himalayas somewhere. One of the amazing things about this trip is that it has taken us to so many unexpected places with unexpected adventures and experiences. There were a few things that influenced how we ended up here. One of them was talking to different backpackers who have traveled here and said it was a really amazing part of their journey. I have heard many times from so many people that they both love and hate India. Now after some time here I totally know what they mean. There are parts of this country that just drive you insane but at the same time it is an experience not to be missed that is filled with random treasures.
The other big factor is the airfare and finding the right flights. So many things on our trip have been determined by flight prices and where we can find a cheap ticket. I got it in my head that I wanted to go to Egypt to scuba dive in the Red Sea. The best deal on all the flights I looked at would be to change planes in Delhi. I figured if we were stopping in Delhi anyway, there was no reason why we shouldn’t go see the Taj Mahal and check off another Wonder of the World. So, the Taj Mahal is really the reason we ended up on this quick but jampacked 10 days in Northern India.
Today we got up super early and checked out of our hotel in Kathmandu. We took a taxi to the airport and said goodbye to Nepal. No doubt I was a little nervous after the effect all the trash and pollution in Nepal had on me. I expected that India was probably going to be worse as far as filth, pollution and car horns. I tried to prepare Brendan as much as possible for the mad chaos I was expecting in Delhi.
The process to get a visa for India was the most complicated of all the places we have been. It was literally about 25 pages long that asked every question about not only myself, but my family’s history. It also stated that two blank passport pages were needed to enter and no satellite phones were allowed in the country. I was nervous about the passport pages because if they did indeed use two blank ones, we would be out of room for the rest of the countries we have planned for our trip. You can no longer add pages to the U.S. passport so this would get us stuck having to pay big money for an emergency, temporary passport.
When we landed, I was happily surprised that the airport was very organized and the immigration process was simple and straight forward. I kindly asked the officer if he could not use up two pages in each of our passports and luckily he obliged and let me pick where he carefully put the stamps. They also didn’t catch or didn’t care that we had a satellite phone tucked away in our checked bag. I felt like we dodged a couple of bullets and were off to a good start with our India adventure.
After some confusion on where to go for Uber pickup, we finally figured it out and got a ride to our hostel in Delhi. Because of the traffic it took almost an hour and it wasn’t worse than some of the other places we have been. I noticed right away that it looked like Delhi was taking some steps to be more conscious about their trash. I was expecting the extreme filth like we saw in Kathmandu but it was not that bad. There were trash and recycle cans with signs that said to make Delhi clean. There were nice landscaped areas, and overall I was very impressed that some initiative was being taken. I knew India was in the process of banning single use plastics and even though I had never been here before could see there has been quite a lot of improvement in Delhi.
We checked into our hostel and decided what to do for the rest of the day. I was surprised that all the attractions around the city were so far away and would take a long time to get to. Because of the extreme traffic, everything I looked up would be at least a 45 minute to one-hour car ride one way. Most things were also too far to walk to and since it was getting late in the day I didn’t know if it was worth trying to tackle the metro system at that time. We had been told by several others it wasn’t the best idea to be wandering around Delhi at night. I don’t know how true that is, but we decided to listen just in case.
Hauz Khas Village was only a 40-minute walk and was supposed to be a cool place to visit. On our walk I remained impressed that the city wasn’t as dirty as I was expecting. One thing that was as bad as I thought it would be, were the car horns. The honking was definitely super over the top, pointless, and annoying. They are not just regular horns either… Everyone gets the aftermarket super power horns that are louder and more annoying than I can even explain. I am not exaggerating when I say this. There are some people that just drive with their hand permanently holding down the horn. They never let up on it and drive with it engaged their whole commute. It is completely unreal. It removes all desire from wanting to explore an area. We passed through certain places that had signs that said “no horn blowing” but this obviously wasn’t enforced as no one seemed to pay any attention to the signs.
We strolled through the village that was filled with shops and cafes and stopped at a city park on the way back.
We got back to the hostel and chilled there the rest of the night and had dinner at their café. We tried to make a game plan for our next 10 days in India.