First Impressions
Within the first day of being in india I have been exposed both to the good and the bad. Yesterday morning I felt quite ready to go home but by the afternoon I was loving every bit of it. India is a diverse place to be, just Delhi alone has so much to offer. After being taken away by commission sharks to a dingy little hotel in Connaught Place and made to pay five times the normal price, I was exhausted and just wanted to be left alone. I escaped early in the morning to Paharganj and found myself a nice hotel called Hare Rama with a rooftop cafe and a psychedelic artshop downstairs. Indian artists hard at work under the UV lights and smoking their beedies to pass time by.
It is a bit of a travellors hangout on the main Bazaar with countless hotels, cafes, and clothe shops surrounding the norrow street. For me it is a good place to start, roaming India being my first time. I sat by the road and just watched the pace of life from morning till night. The streets slowly awoke to sunrise and with time, its pace fastened until in the afternoon traffic congestion had completely blocked the two meter wide road. A web of rickshaws and bikes would find themselves entangled together, each thumping down their horns at the others, a hopeless effort to untie the knot.
It is nice just to soak in what you are breathing; a mixture of incents, cow dung, chai tea and smokes. At the end of the day what comes out of the nose is surely black and your lungs feel tired and worn out.
Its a relaxing place to be. I sat at a cafe and after meeting the first travellor, they just kept on coming. It is nice to sit around and swap travel tales, jokes and cultural differences. I'm meeting lots of fantastic people from Spain, Holland, Isreal....
Cows here are free to roam around the streets, forget about the caste system, just be a cow and you're totally autonomous.
There's no place to stop in describing India so I'll put my entry on hold until next time. It really is a place one has to experience for oneself. See you soon.
