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First stop on what turned out to be a two year trip. Read my trip report from three months in this fascinating country. (1994 to 1995)

India, part 1

Si_lad
2004-03-26 21:22:27

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the way!). At the top we sat down to rest and enjoy the temple, which surprisingly is dedicated to Hanuman the monkey God!. All of a sudden an Indian man started to shout at me in Hindi "Apka Bag Sir… Apka Bag". I turned around to see a small monkey sneakily dragging my bag away. I grabbed it just in time.

A local boy sold us some nuts to feed to the monkeys and as I was team cameraman, Dibs was elected to feed them. At first a small, gentle looking monkey came to her for the nuts – seconds later a big one came and scared the little one off. Then an even bigger one arrived… eventually a dog scared them all (and Dibs) off and we left it at that!

Rather than take the bus back down to Chandigarh we decided to take the small "toy train". This proved to be a good decision and it was a very pleasant journey back down through the mountain forests. We made friends with a Canadian couple – Ana and Trevor who were on their honeymoon. We decided to head for Delhi and changed from the toy train to an air-con train for the last leg of the journey into the capital.

Delhi Delhi Complete Pandemonium.

We arrived at New Delhi train station late at night and were met by total chaos. We had decided to head towards the YMCA as a safe bet, but the real problem was trying to get someone to take us there. The taxi and rickshaw system appeared to be run by some sort of mafia and all we were pestered by various "touts" trying to convince us to stay at their hotels. One of these touts claimed to be from an "official tourist bureau" and led us to an office (which said "official tourist bureau"). When we said that we wanted to stay at the YMCA he said, "OK – I’ll phone them". He did this and said that they were full and proceeded to tell us to other places to stay. If it wasn’t for the sharp eye of Trevor we may have been scammed, but he had noticed that the "official" had dialed ...