Delhi

The flight from Bangkok to Delhi was a perfect transition from Thailand to India! First of all, the flight was really smooth ( yay no freak outs from me! ) and the Bollywood movie selection and Indian meal was a nice introduction to what we were about to land into! When we finally did land though I remember thinking 'are we really in India?' Because it did not seem very Indian at all! I quickly had my mind changed when we were on our way to our hotel though. Every picture or movie you've seen or story that you've heard about the roads in India are all 100% accurate. There are lines, but there seems to be no rules at all! Well, except for one. And that rule is: wherever you can SQUEEZE into, you can be. Oh, and make sure to honk and yell at anything and everything, even if you don't really have a reason to! These roads are just ridiculously, insanely unreal. It's absolutely terrifying to be in a car (or a pedestrian actually), but it's also so much fun that you don't even mind the fact you almost die 8 times every block!

Just when I thought the main roads were the most insane things I've ever experienced, we turned into the bazaar that the hotel we were staying in was. Take the craziness of those main roads and cram it into narrow spaces between very old, interestingly built buildings, add some cows, goats and dogs, and tons of little shops and their owners and hundreds of people walking up and down the bazaar. I love how that was where we were staying for our first couple of nights in India, we jumped right into the insanity of it all.

Kathleen and Anna arrived in their taxi at the hotel before I did and so when I finally arrived they were SO EXCITED to tell me that not only was I rooming with them, but a rat as well! INDIA CHALLENGE #1! While the three of us were trying to figure out what to do about the situation one of the hotel men came over freaking out when he heard us say 'rat'. But then he said "oh this room? It's just mouse! Mouse is God, mouse is God, it's okay. " And so that was that!

Over our couple of days in Delhi we did some touring around the city to see some mosques and the National Museum. Honestly my favourite part of the days was nothing that we went to see, but everything I saw travelling between our hotel and those places. This is an entirely different world than Canada, or even Thailand!

The smells here are so overwhelming. It varies from delicious Indian food to incense and to such unsettling, potent smells of urine. Nothing here has any order or makes any sense. Nothing is on time, and everything takes so long (including toast and tea which takes close to an hour to get, in case you were wondering)!

Despite all of that, I believe that India is exactly where I'm supposed to be. I think that it's going to be really good for me. It's going to test me often, push me to my limits, teach me things and open my heart.