10 Feb 2014

A short sojourn in India

A busy road in India
I had always wanted to go to India . To me, the word India resonates with all things mystical and romantic. And I can say that after more than 20 years of wanting to go I was suddenly told that our trip was booked and we would be flying on the 27 January! I was so excited that I began packing almost immediately !

Our flight was at 6pm Malaysian time and there was another family going with us - my husband's colleague and his wife and their 18 year old son. We met at the airport and once we had checked in browsed around the shops there while waiting to board. Soon we were up and away ! The seats were quite comfortable though it was a semi budget airline - Malindo Air. However the flight was delayed by almost 40 minutes : someone had checked in but did not board the plane. So the flight attendants and the ground personnel had to get his luggage back out, which I'm sure was not an easy task! 

The journey took us almost 6 hours and we arrived in New Delhi around 9.30 pm Indian time- still early by all standards, in spite of the delay. A representative of the tour agency was waiting for us once we cleared Immigration and took us to our van - a 12 seater Ford Traveller which was our transport throughout our stay in India. The drive to the hotel was long - it was situated in the outskirts of New Delhi.  

Our tour started the next day. We were going to Jaipur , a city about 250km away and took us the better part of a day to reach. Along the way we saw so many interesting and fascinating sites. The road was not an expressway though the driver said it was. Oh by the way his name was Samsar and he would be more or less our guide as well as our driver, throughout our stay ion India. 

The traffic outside Delhi I suppose can only be said to be horrendous- for almost one hour it was a bumper to bumper crawl and I grimace every time the van was manoeuvred into any line that seemed to be moving. That was an experience by itself, I tell you. If you can drive in New Delhi you should be able to drive anywhere! And the noise - honks everywhere . To us who are not accustomed to noisy driving it can be a bemusing experience. In fact on the backs of all trucks and buses one can see the sign -" Please honk! "

the words "please honk" on the backs of trucks
    
We finally arrived in Jaipur around 2.00pm in the afternoon, just in time for lunch, a quick freshing up and then we had to get out again to see the sights in Jaipur, which is the capital of Rajasthan. 

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