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Monday, July 30

INDIA!

Inspired by Ashanti, my good friend with whom I shared the Indian madness, I feel like writing about my India trip.

I should have done this since months ago, but yeah too much stuff to do, until I abandoned this blog.

I went to India on February. Honestly, I was not really keen to go. I’ve been staying in Malaysia since 2004, but I’m not a big fan of Mamak, Curry, or etc. I was not really into hindi movie and familiar with the history.

Nonetheless, I had a little luck on my side that allows me to go to India, with my best friend Ms. N and her sister, Ms. W.

After the very little preparation and worried from our friends and family, we boarded on the plane to Delhi. We were really excited and worried at the same time. India, God!

It was freaking cold in Delhi; we waited around 2 hours to settle visa on arrival. Luckily, Ms. N was with us, with her broken Hindi we managed to get through the immigration. We went straight away to our Guest House at Main Bazaar. We were really hungry, but we were scared to go out at night. We wanted to find some kebab on the alley of our guest house; however people started to offering us some help. We have been warned by our friends, these people will take advantage of us, hence we were really scared and we decided to buy the vegetarian burger, bring it back to our guest house and sleep.

The next day, we went out to explore Delhi. We had no guide book, no map, no direction and no tour guide. We bought Vodafone simcard and headed to
Connaught Place
where the madness started. We wanted to check out some markets around
Connaught Place
, have our lunch and maybe sitting around in the park as the weather was really nice. Nevertheless, people started following use everywhere, they offered help that we have known going to cost us some money, we felt insecure as we tried to find our way to the bookshop. We finally went to the bookshop and bought Delhi map, we decided to go to Red Fort so we took the metro.

Shockingly, the metro station was good and the metro itself looks decent. We were quite happy to finally get out from the full of scams
Connaught Place
. It such a sad thing though, it would be nice if we can sit around the park in
Connaught Place
.

We went to Red Fort without realizing that it situated in Old Delhi. When we came out from the Metro, we walked in the small alley, where people selling clothes, foods, and etc. Beggars were everywhere. After the experience in
Connaught Place
, We got to scared to ask people for direction. We asked the direction from one foreigner and he was really shocked with the fact that our first day in Delhi and we arrived in the most chaotic place in Delhi.

The Old Delhi madness did not turn us down. We visited Red Fort and India Gate. We walked all the way to Khan Market from India Gate. At India Gate, I tried panipuri, the first real Indian food I tasted, but I did not like it. My impression towards Indian food hasn’t changed that time.

Khan Market is our sanctuary in the middle of Delhi. I visited Café Turtle, bookstores with wide range of collections, Fab India, and stumbled to the pastry shop with extremely nice desserts.

But our adventure did not stop there. We tried to go back to Main Bazaar by Metro. When we just got up from the station, the New Delhi Railway Station, there were around 20 auto rickshaw drivers came all together trying to approach us. We saw men peeing everywhere. The smell, the dark night and the panic attack, we would never forget about our first day India. In India, I saw guys were peeing everywhere, as long as there’s a wall, feel free to pee.

Things to do in India:

#1 Pee like a local (for guys only) J
#2 Buy books (apparently the government subsidies the books in India, you’re gonna see a wide range of collection with really cheap price)


            (to be continued)