Travelling to India

So with the van packed up and mum having thoroughly checked all our gear, we set off. We flew from Munich, Germany so we could fly directly to Delhi and not give baggage handlers the opportunity to throw our bikes around any more than needed. The trip started brilliantly: The French filth thought that I was driving too fast and decided I owed them £100 for the pleasure.

The lovely french police lady.

Once at the airport we parked in what seemed like the worlds biggest car park, got on the flight and headed to DelhiComing into land at Delhi it looked like a normal city from the air. We picked up our bags and found thankfully the luggage handlers had not been jumping up and down on them and we ventured out to get a taxi. By this point none of us had really slept in a day and a half and we were a bit wired. The idea was to leisurely do a bit of sight seeing and catch the over night bus to Manali that evening. As soon as we got out the airport in the taxis it became evident it was rush hour.

None of us where really expecting what we saw; we all knew India was slightly dirty and busy but we were not quite prepared for just how dirty and busy. The first introduction to Indian life was a bloke having a no.2 on the pavement.

This is his mate doing a No.1 (could not bring myself to taking a picture of the other action!) The roads were covered in litter, and I mean covered!

We went to the tourist travel agency to book our bus, they did not accept plastic, so Lara and Scott set off to the local ATM being shown by a local guy. Lara , again being the hardened traveller, once she had got money from the machine got busy stuffing it in different body locations to be safe. So occupied by this, she forgot to take my cash card back out from the machine... great! 4 hrs here and she has already lost our primary money source!

With a very short 'team talk' we decided to scrap all ideas of sight seeing and did the hardened traveller thing and went and hid in a posh hotel until the bus arrived at nightfall.

We found Delhi to be a little too much for us, especially after no sleep for a long time. We got our taxi to the bus rank later on in the after noon, thankfully not one of these:The one we got had air conditioning! A real relief as the heat in Delhi is intense.Cyclist were everywhere. This is definitely one place I would not cycle as these guys are really playing with death, there are no real traffic laws I could see being followed here. If your side of the road was busy, then they just drive on the other and honk their horn at on coming traffic.Wonder if this guy is doing the same trip as us?

Once the bus arrived we argued with the bus driver that we really did not see the need for buying another ticket for our luggage, as it was only going in the luggage compartment and consequently got our first taste of haggling. On the bus we were to meet some friends that we would bump into for the next 3 weeks. The bus was 16 hours long and went through the night to get to Manali. I shudder to think what the bus driver was on to keep him going, but the bloke had speeding issues, so we resolved it was best to try and get some sleep and not think about it!