Delhi

The flight from Kuala Lumpur to India went well. Sarah and I had the two seats on the side. We had a delicious Indian dinner of Chicken Tikka and I read a book - didn't have our own TVs for this flight and they were showing a foreign movie. They did try to please the English audience with an episode of The Starter Wife, but that show is crap so I carried on reading. It took over an hour to navigate through the airport since we had to go through lines for health check (looking for swine flu), immigration, baggage claim and customs. When we finally made it through we looked for our hotel which was supposed to pick us up but couldn't find them. So we got a pre-paid taxi and had a nice driver named Jaipal who was going to pick us up this morning and drive us around to all the sites, but that didn't happen - more on that later.

When we checked into the hotel they didn't have us on their reservation list, hence why they didn't pick us up. I had my online confirmed reservation print out so they knew we had already paid for a room. The deluxe room we paid for wasn't available so they upgraded. Sweet! Or should I say Suite!? Taking a shower was awesome, and so was sleeping in a bed! We cranked the air con up (its SO hot here!) and watched an episode of So You Think You Can Dance from last year's auditions. Emersing ourselves right into the culture haha.

This morning we enjoyed the breakfast buffet - their french toast is intersting...- then waited for Jaipal. His brother came instead and took us past a temple then to a tourist office. Our "scam radars" started going off...lots of scams involved unofficial tourist offices where they sign you up for tours that never happen. Hesitantly we went inside and met Raj, a nice guy that lives mostly in London managing hotels. Jaipal's brother explained that he was now going to pass us off to a tourist taxi driver who would take us around the rest of the day. It ended up being cheaper this way so we went with it.

Our new driver in his "air conditioned" car drove us around to some of Delhi's main attractions including Parliament, the President's House, India Gate, National Museum, Ghandi's cemetary and place of assassination, Indira Ghandi's house and place of assassination, a few sari shops (no, haven't bought one yet...too expensive they are trying to rip us off) and finally after much pleading a legitimate tourist office. At that final place we booked a tour for the rest of our time here in which we will have one driver who will take us to all the cities we want to go to, then we'll get the train back from Jaisalmer. Yes, a private driver for the next 2 weeks. I love how cheap it is here. Let's just home he shows up in the morning.

A few of the intersting things we saw today include Taylor Swift on a billboard for wall plaster and insulation. Do you think she knows she's on that ad? Two young boys riding a camel in town. A wild monkey eating a banana next to a banana vendor which made me wonder if he stole it or paid for it. Begger children trying to sell us books, doing cartwheels, playing drums etc trying to get money. About a dozen men peeing on the side of the road throughout the day. When you gotta go you gotta go I guess. And the craziest driving I've ever seen but surprisingly no accidents. Oh but our first cab driver did get a ticket for running a red light. There aren't lane lines and you can drive wherever you want but apparently you can't run a red light.

That's all for now. Super exhausted (possibly dehyrdation + stress of new city?) so I'm hitting the hay (its 9pm) and saying a prayer that our driver shows up tomorrow morning!