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A sign at the Delhi airport showing the start of Diwali. Seen when we first arrived in India.Late Night<\/b><\/p>\n
When Barb and I were planning this trip we realized that getting to India from Vancouver was going to be a gruelling couple of days of travel.<\/p>\n
Sidebar: we\u2019ve heard rumours that there is now a direct Vancouver to Delhi flight. If we plan a return trip we definitely need to look into this.<\/p>\n
We decided to break up the two long fights by spending a night in London, allowing us to rest up and the next day continue on to India. I\u2019m writing this first section from our hotel where we happen to be right now which is very close to Heathrow Airport. In fact, from our hotel window, we can see the runway.<\/p>\n
Once we arrive at our first destination in India we\u2019ll be able to determine if having one extra night of rest will have been worth it or not.<\/p>\n
Not being used to the 8-hour time change difference in London, as much as we wanted we didn\u2019t stay awake long enough to get a full night\u2019s sleep. By 2 AM, both Barb and I were wide awake. We knew that it was unlikely that we would get back to sleep so we did the only thing that made sense at the time.<\/p>\n
We watched a Bollywood movie.<\/p>\n
The movie was lots of fun and helpful to start getting us into an Indian frame of mind<\/i>. It was your typical guy who refuses to marry a girl the day before the wedding, girl goes on honeymoon by herself, guy ends up wanting girl back type of movie. With lots of singing and dancing of course. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
The Time<\/b><\/p>\n
We\u2019ve already set all of our watches to India time. It quickly became apparent that this trip to India would be taking us to pretty much the other side of the globe at 12.5 hours ahead of Vancouver. We\u2019re still trying to figure out why India has an extra .5 hour to their time zone but no matter what it\u2019s going to take the longest<\/u> amount of time to recover from jet lag on this trip.<\/p>\n
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First Impressions<\/b><\/p>\n
We landed in Delhi around 11 PM and we were met at the airport by our driver who will be with us for the next 7-8 days. When we were in the planning stages of the trip and we decided that hiring a driver was the way that we would be getting around, we wondered if we would be met at the airport by the guy holding a sign with our names on it? We weren\u2019t disappointed. Our driver had just Barb\u2019s name but since Barb had done all of the travel bookings this wasn’t too surprising.<\/p>\n
The Traffic<\/b><\/p>\n
It seemed like the drive from the Delhi airport to our hotel took hours but in reality, it was less than an hour however our frame of mind was a bit out of sorts given that it was close to 2 AM when we finally got to our hotel.<\/p>\n
When we arrived the temperature was in the low 20\u2019s and a bit humid but we were expecting it to be hotter in the morning when the sun was out. This turned out to be a pretty accurate prediction.<\/p>\n
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We had breakfast at the hotel the next morning, our first meal in India and if it was any impression we were going to be loving the food here. The main part of our breakfast was flatbreads called paranthas, served with a delicious mixture of lentils and potatoes. We noticed that the coffee was being prepared with a powder like instant coffee but it tasted far better than instant coffee that I have ever had. Overall a very good start to our stay in India.<\/p>\n
Our driver was waiting for us at the front of the hotel about an hour before we had agreed, also a good sign. Barb and I were all ready to go so we headed out to explore the city.<\/p>\n
And we stopped dead in traffic about 20 meters from the hotel.<\/p>\n
Traffic in Delhi is pretty much indescribable. There\u2019s constant honking of horns and driving anywhere takes a huge amount of time. We were out of the hotel for about 7 hours yesterday, seeing different sights. Of those 7 hours, we were easily inside the car getting from place to place within the city (mostly stopped in traffic jams) for over 4 of those hours. By the time we got back to the hotel were both exhausted.<\/p>\n
Of course, we had seen some incredible sights during the day but it seemed that the time spent looking at sights was completely overshadowed by the hours driving in traffic through the city.<\/p>\n
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I don\u2019t want to make it sound like we\u2019re not having a good time. Our driver is quite pleasant and the food has been fantastic so far. Just what we\u2019ve seen in just the first full day here is breathtaking. We both knew that traffic in Delhi was going to be a challenge so we\u2019re not surprised at it.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s early Saturday morning as I\u2019m writing this and today we have another day of seeing the sights. Tomorrow we\u2019ll be leaving Delhi for our next destination and we expect that all of the future places that we\u2019ll visit on this trip will not have the traffic that Delhi has. We\u2019re both looking forward to all of it.<\/p>\n