Delhi at 7am is pleasant in April, however when combined with the traffic, humidity, a million times more people than I have ever seen in my life and sacred cows, I realised India was going to be a cultural awakening! Our tour guide Tarun Sharma, from Adventure Holiday Tours met us at the airport, thank goodness he was actually there! That was probably my only real concern for the trip! Never mind the fact that we would be travelling with people we had never met, in a country we had never been to, amongst a billion other people! Hey I am Australian, we are fairly optimistic people with a never say die attitude! Tarun took us to our hotel to freshen up, the hotel was a budget inner city one, clean and comfortable. The area didn’t seem very touristy to me, in fact there was a distinct lack of other tourists everywhere we went in India! Excepting the Taj Mahal and Amber Fort. Talk about pick the tourist! We visited the Laxminarayan Temple, which was our first exposure to India’s spiritual side. As a Christian, I have to try and suppress my own beliefs and theologies to try and understand other peoples religious viewpoints. Tarun had a unique passionate way of describing the faith of his family, Hinduism. It was engaging and set the scene for some kind of religious awakening that became a consistent theme throughout our journey.I enjoyed the temple, it was refreshing to see people unashamedly dedicated to their Gods.
We also checked out the very modern government buildings, with plush gardens and the India Gate backgrounded by more beautiful gardens. Where on earth was this incredibly poor backward country I had been told about both as a child and an adult? Where was the dust and dirt? Yes we would eventually get to see some slums and beggars and distinct poverty but today we were seeing the best Delhi had to offer. We were also getting to feel the scorn of Delhi’s summer heat, it was so humid. We needed rest, was it jet lag or a combination of heat and humidity? Whatever it was, we were exhausted, back to the hotel for rest. our tour guide was most understanding and probably thought Australian women are pretty weak really. Day 1 was done for tourism, we were happy to head out to dinner by ourselves later on and sample some ‘real’ butter chicken and chicken biryani….how the taste buds still remember these amazing first dishes! Navigating ourselves around the hotel area was interesting, however we did feel safe on our own and nobody hassled us. On the contrary people were friendly and nice, even when we tried to buy a knife to cut our fruit up!
indiahighsandlows 