Delhi must mean Chaos in Hindi

After 7.5 hour flight from Paris we arrived in Delhi, where it took another hour to get through customs, and another 40 mins to cross Delhi to our hotel in the central bazaar area - Pahar Ganj of Delhi. The hotel was no Ritz but at 25 dollars per night then what can you expect. At least we had air conditioning, but it was so noisy we had to sleep with ear plugs in! And of course, didnt hear the alarm the next day.

And so it was out and about into Delhi, and what a place! There was a cow eating out of rubbish in front of the hotel, dogs walking everywhere, hundreds of motorised rickshaws stopping every few seconds offering you a ride. Central Delhi is really dirty and very smelly, if its not the smell of cow s**t, or human urine, that almost knocks you senseless, then its the tons of rubbish just lying on the floor wherever you go. For once in my life I wished i had a cold and blocked up nose. But no such luck!

A local 19 year old called Banti who seemed nice saying "No, I dont want your money, just to practice my english" started talking to us and for some reason managed to persuade us - as we thought it was out of the kindness of his heart - to follow him to the supposedly official Government Tourist Office where we thought we were going to pick up a free tourist map, only to find that someone tried to persuade us to book a chauffer driven car to take us around Rajastan for a week for 450 dollars! Of course when we got outside, and the boy realised that we didnt buy a trip and he wasnt going to get his commission, we asked us to buy him a dictionary to improve his english! We later found out that this type of scam is common and that he was going to return the book and take the money!

After that, we grabbed a rickshaw and headed into the Red fort (Banti had warned us earlier that this area was far too risky for foreigners) which was a huge fort build in the time of the Mughel power. Buy this time we had both sweated so much that we were soaked...
Not surprising with 32 degrees and 87% humidity. We then decided to go to the Jama Masjid Mosque which is the largest in India. Being as adventurous as we are, we choose to walk through the old bazaar back streets, an incredible network of narrow streets full of tiny shops selling all you can imagine and nothing you really need. Once againg smell was overpowering and there was rubbish everywhere.

We noticed that everyone-men, women, children- was starring at Patricia which in part was because we were almost the only foreigners around but more so because they could see her arms and her legs and all indian women, wear a sharee which covers them from head to toe.

Arriving at the Mosque this actually became a problem and despite Patricia now wearig a shawl, an extreme muslim fanatic approached us shouting in arabic, pointing at her neck and ankles which were still to be seen. This now brought attention to us, and half a dozen kids now started pulling at us shouting "chocolate, chocolate", other men aproached women started starring and us desperately trying to get away through the crowded market stalls and rush into the mosque... ironically our safest place to be!!! Thanks Allah, we owe you one!

After this stress, the intense heat, and having lost litres through sweating, we thought we' head back to the hotel before sunset... walking around that area in the dark would not have been too much fun. So it was a good indian dinner on the roof of our hotel and time for bed. End of day 1. And to look forward (?) to another day in delhi.