New Delhi India

After a 14 hour flight, 4 movies and 4 TV shows later, we arrived in New Delhi India at 5:30pm India time. The time difference is +10.5 hours and Nepal is +10.45. Going through immigration is easy and so it getting our luggage.

The first thing we do is exchange $100 USD for 4,700 rupees. This takes about 20 minutes. They required our passports and photo copied them.

We get out of the airport and I see a phone kiosk so I decide to purchase a SIM card for my phone. This takes about 25 minuets. They want to know your business. To obtain the ability to phone, I had to give them my passport and itinerary of which they photocopied the visa, passport and itinerary and made me sign each photocopy. Then I had to fill out an application including things like my father's name. The cost was 300r (~$6) for the SIM card and some air time. I ended up with a little over 150r air time and my first call to Noel cost me 1.5r.

Next is to find our hotel. I booked it on line before I left. My foreign travel experience has taught me to always book your first hotel, on line, before you arrive. It is way more cost effective and you know that you have a room after a long, jet lagged, "little sleep" flight. The other reason I booked one, was because it was very important to the Indian consulate that our visa application had a "where we are staying" address on it. This also proved to be very important to the phone people. There are lots of options from $10-$750USD per night. I thought I didn't want the bottom of the barrel so I took a $12 room instead. It was recommend by "Lonely Planet" and I only had to put $2 down on my credit card. The hotel is in the middle of New Delhi, about 25 minutes from the airport.

So from the airport, we found an express train to New Delhi for 80 rupees each. In order to get on the train, we pass through security, much like airport security. This all took another 20 minutes. Finally, after a 15 minute train ride we are in New Delhi.

We are greeting by potential taxi drivers and I negotiate a deal; 200 rupees to get to our hotel. He starts telling me that there is some festival going on and we need to go the DTTDC and call the hotel manager from there. He draws us some map and I mostly understand him.

So off we go in our auto rickshaw. We are weaving in and out of traffic, nearly running over people, cutting off a huge bus and passing several cows that seemed to be just roaming with no restraints. The driver takes us to the DTTDC which looks more like a travel agency with two agents. We go to the one desk and the man asks us our business and finds out we are only in New Delhi for one day. He insists that we have to see the Taj mahal. He is believing that we will take some mode of transportation for another 4 hours and get our hotel near the Taj, do a tour and then get us time for our flight to Nepal. All for $250USD. We tell him several times no and finally we get to call our hotel.

The hotel manager finds my confirmation, and everything is in order but he informs me there is some festival going on and I will not be able to stay there for some kind of security reasons. So I repeat what he said to make sure I understood and then he reiterated the facts. The hotel manager told me that the DTTDC would help me find another hotel. The DTTDC operator told me that there was not much around and so we might as well go to the Taj Mahal. I told him we were not going to do that and we would leave and find another hotel with the help of our taxi.

The taxi driver asked me what I wanted to spend. I told him 500 rupees. He looked a little shocked and suggested a middle class hotel for $50-80USD. I told him, "No, I want a 500 rupee hotel. At that point, the DTTDC agent came out and informed us that the hotel manager called back and said we could now have a room after all. So off we went dodging more cows and people till we got to our hotel.

The hotel manager was trying to talk to me about rooms. I showed him my itinerary and that the booking fee stated I owed 585r on arrival. He suggested a 1,200r room complete with hot water. They ended up showing me the original room and I said I would take that. When I came back, to the desk, I seemed to now be speaking to the owner of the joint. He was questioning the 585r charge and I showed him the paper (they all really seem to love paper and documents). He asked me who I booked through and I told him, "Lonely Planet" and that changed everything. He said, "No problem, we will also upgrade you to a room on the first floor with hot water." After 15 minutes more of photocopying our passports and intinerary and filling in forms we ended up with the original room I looked at. I did end up paying 200r more for wireless internet.

They were helpful though, I asked them for a 220V plug adaptor and someone escorted me out to the market and showed me where I could purchase one for 25r.
We then ate our first Indian meal in a restaurant across the road. During the meal, I was able to connect with Noel Isaac on my cell phone and let him know we arrived. We went to bed at 10pm local time. We had missed a whole night of sleep on the plane as they are 10.5 hours ahead of us. We did manage to sneak in a 2 hour snooze on the plane but they are not that restful.


To sit down on the toilet, I have to sit sideways as there is no room for my knees. As I am writing this blog entry at 5:45am, a loud knock comes at our door. It is some hotel person with a problem and they seemed to have misplaced the photocopy of visas and passports. I tell him I gave it all to them and that the person at the desk put it in the drawer below the photocopier. He said, "Please sir, come down with your passports." I told him, "Aaron is still sleeping and we will come later."

Showering is always interesting in Asia. The shower is part of the bathroom and your shower head is on the wall of your bathroom and the drain in the floor. Aaron had his "wake up" shower and said, "while cold, it was not too bad." I wonder how much it extra it would have cost to get a room with heat as it is about 15C in this room.

So we are off for breakfast and going to Explore New Delhi today.