We arrived safely in New Delhi, India after a rather long trip from Cyprus.
We packed up and Maggie drove us to the airport in Lanarca, Cyprus. We left earlier than normal because of closed roads into the airport & additional security due to the current Israel war.
A 3.5 hour flight to Abu Dhabi arriving at 1am, then a 9 hour wait, we didn't want to book a hotel because it seemed a waste of money sleeping for 5 hours and then having to head back to the airport to checkin for the next flight, tried to get a sleeping pod but they were all fully booked, so it was rather a long wait!
Boarded Abu Dhabi to New Delhi flight, only 3 hours and slept most of the way, couldn't keep our eyes open by this time so flight zoomed by!
Met a young lady from Delhi, Rahidka who was chatty & friendly. She gave us lots of suggestions of foods to eat & places to visit.
Told because of CWC 2023 🏏 there would be queues that could possibly take 1.5 hours to process at airport customs .... thankfully that wasn't the case and we walked straight through in under 30minutes.
Got outside and a guy was super friendly offering us his taxi, we had already researched the approximate cost from the airport to hotel. He said this is best deal and those other taxis don't go to that side of town, it will cost Nz$61, a little different to the $15 we were told. Deane said no thanks and asked him to remove our bags from the taxi, then he went over stopped a taxi with an Indian lady in and asked if they were reasonably priced, honest & safe and go to the otherside of town where we were going...she said yes of course.
So along came the black taxi drive and offered to take us for $16 .... perfect said Deane and in we got.
The streets and motorway were more orderly than I expected. The taxi driver was hardcase, he didn't like following other cars, was trying to get us to the hotel fast as possible. He darted from one side of the motorway to the other, in & out of traffic, numerous times narrowly missing other vehicles. When there was 2 lanes, he just created his own lane 😉 10 mins into the 40 minute ride he said he thought he knew where it was but all of a sudden wasnt 100% sure! 😨😳Fortunately we had downloaded the cities of Delhi & New Delhi on Google offline maps, so we were able to load the hotel into MAPS and direct him there.
As we got closer to New Delhi everything became very caotic, traffic, people and everything , Deane stopped the taxi and we got out. So the quoted price for the taxi , turned out to be a one way price and he wanted more to get back to the airport!!!! Deane gave him a tip and he drove off quite happy!
Walked around the corner, checked into the hotel and went to sleep at 6pm, were were exhausted!! only to be woken by some man chanting & singing at the temple across the road.
We expected culture shock, going from rather quiet, orderly Kato drys in Cyprus where we were lucky to see 5 people in a day 😀 to Delhi where there's millions of people and tuktuks everywhere ... it did take a good sleep to recover from the developing world feeling again 😆 🤣 😂