For all our (Indian) friends and relatives that prefer to read the INDIA REPORT in English, I will like to translate most of what happened. Please feel invited to comment on anything you read. Find the attached photographs with the german articles („India“ in German means „Indien“).
India, April 10th.
This is our first day in India, after we started our flight from Duesseldorf via London to Delhi the day before. Early at six o’clock we arrive in Delhi and run from air-conditioning into a wall of heat and humidity. After immigration that kills us just like the ones in the USA, we change a few Euros into Rupee. It is quite some bunch of money you get for little Euro, comparable to the former Italian Lira. Our man in Delhi is not visible at first, so Geraldine and Esther-Sensei go back to take another look at the line of people waiting and holding up signs for tourists like us. Our friendly guide leads us to the car, where we store our entire luggage to come back all the way through the airport to confirm the flight back via BA. We find out the hard way, that it is not necessary with BA to confirm the flight back. The impressions we get during these first minutes in India are immense. People everywhere, a lot of them sleeping on the floor. A lot of smells and various thoughts are flashing our minds to be pushed aside almost immediately for a lack of solutions. I promise myself to continue thinking about it later. Maybe this is one of the reasons I fell into a black whole after the journey.
We are driven to a small place in Delhi in a van with air conditioning and bullet hole in the windscreen. Here we take a shower and have very good hygienic circumstances. I had feared worse for the stay in India and am relieved about this. The loo is much better than the one on the plane that was occupied by two Italians smoking pot. We were hoping they were sent back on the arrival, as they had really passed out quite badly.
After a short stay in our stopover place, we get a wonderful breakfast served by very friendly Indians. The breakfast is a bit British including bananas, orange marmalade, toast, muesli and cornflakes. We enjoy our first Indian Masala-Chai (spicy tea). Later down the journey, we buy ourselves the spices for making our own, but it doesn´t taste the same like everything you compare with having eaten in a different holiday environment.
We are driven criss cross Delhi from one monument to another. We are not really this kind of tourists that came for visiting monuments. Bernd Symons (our travel agent), you could have known this, when you read our CV. The introduction is meant extremely kind and we do not trust ourselves to deny this kind of service since our guide is very nice and does a perfect job. After having visited about four or five monuments we are truly finished. The drive through Delhi is insane. We do not fear about safety at all, but it is a very tight, sticky, lowd and slow drive. We see dogs and cows all over the street, TucTucs (rickshaws), cars, bicycles, pedestrians, camels and many more wildly running around but still working in harmony on the „wrong side“ of the road.
We use the time of driving to take snapshots through the window of our van. I will surely not cultivate this kind of photography but it is autistic for the impressions we get.
I notice the first cobra in a basket at lunch. I turn my head away from it in disgust while I pass it. The meal at the restaurant is fantastic. We are having tandori and bread, a nice combination. We are watching the seals on the water bottles and drink the plain water, which we can not stand at the end of the journey after only 10 days. The reason may be that it doesn’t taste right after three to four litres a day.
About at five o’clock that afternoon, our man and the driver take us to the station in Delhi. The driver gets a little tip and smiles all over his face. He did a wonderful job. I am still wondering where he got that bullet hole in the windshield from. He doesn’t drive that bad at all. The train has got eight beds per open compartment. We are relieved to hit our „beds“ after this long day and share the compartment with an Indian guy who enjoys his „plank“ on ground level. We can understand his point after hitting our heads at the ceiling getting up from our „planks“ above. After a few hours of ride, we have a stress situation at a station when a server comes to our compartment, offering drinks. His difficult Indian English calls the station „Jaipur“ which we misunderstand as „Jodhpur“. When we realize our mistake, we go back to bed again and sleep on and off for about another six hours. We are very happy to arrive healthy in Jodhpur the next morning.
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