Destination Delhi

Monday 25th of June -
Finished off my last minute packing of the stuff I'm shipping down to New Zealand and my luggage for the trip. After checking the weight of my luggage I managed to convince myself that I was going to get seriously fleeced for overweight baggage. My round the world ticket was just an email of my itinerary and contains no helpful info on baggage allowances etc. After a frantic hour of re-arranging my carry on baggage and shipping some stuff I brought the baggage weight down, only to discover when I got to the airport that the ticket I'm on allows me to carry a small contain load of luggage (as long as it will fit into 2 cases and each one weighs less than 32 kg).

Shane and Mum dropped me off at the airport and we said our farewells and my three month travelling adventure began (well almost). I passed through Heathrow and made my flight connection, although thats not an experience that I'd be particularly keen to do too often. Security in Heathrow is a pain in the ***. On top of making you exit as if your staying in London at terminal one, and then making you go through security (despite having already been through this at another European airport), I was selected for a random pat down search and to top it all off had to pass my shoes through a seperate scanner. Travelling in the aftermath of 9/11 and the London bombings is definitely an interesting experience.


Tuesday 26th of June
Arrived in Delhi after 7 and a half hours in the air. Total distance travelled so far 4411 miles, according to my RTW itinerary. Didn't really sleep on the flight, but the on-demand selection of films kept me busy for most of the trip. Thankfully I arranged an airport pickup from the hotel I'm staying in, after a long flight its nice not to have to think about where you're going. I'm staying in the Paharganj area of the city which has the main selling point of being close to the main train station (which will come in handy when I'm going to Agra in a few days). I'm just back from going out for a wander around. By god is hot here. I'm not sure what the exact temp is but it feels like about 40 degrees. Its hot sticky and a little overcast. I definitely think I'll be getting up early and trying to avoid the heat in the middle of the day. If the heat at 10pm is anything to go by, I'm not going to last long in the midday heat! :)

Travelling by car from the airport to the hotel this morning was interesting, the road was filled with a chaotic mix of cars, peddle rickshaws, auto-rickshaws, suicidal pedestrians and assorted other vehicles. The lane discipline seems to be similar to what I experienced in Beijing. i.e lanes are optional and you can complete any maneouver you like as long as beep a lot before, during and after any sudden lane changes! :)

Anyway - I haven't had anything to eat in a while so I'm going to go off and try and get something to eat before I go to bed. No photos to post yet, but hopefully I'll be able to rectify that soon.