Karol Bāgh

Hello India! We said farewell to our travel buddy (Jamie) and boarded our flight to Delhi. We'd read a lot online on what to expect when arriving in Delhi, so we weren't too surprised that we landed in a thick haze of smog. We were, however, pleasantly surprised that the airport and drive to our hotel wasn't nearly as chaotic as we'd anticipated. This could be down to the fact that we've spent a lot of time in places with crazy traffic and drivers and we are now a bit desensitised to the constant honking and near misses, or that Delhi's not as crazy as the internet built it up to be - we'll find out. After some trip admin, we wandered through Karol Bagh market and had our first dinner at a South Indian Restaurant. Cass chose to start her vegetarian diet, and Mike had butter chicken - both were very large portions, delicious, and hopefully won't make us sick.

The next day, we decided to explore Old Delhi today, so we took the metro from Karol Bagh to a stop in Old Delhi, near the Red Fort. The stop we got off at was at the exit to the Red Fort, so we had to walk 15min to get to the entrance. The walk from the metro to the entrance was a lot - rickshaws, taxi drivers and vendors trying to get your attention left, right and centre, having to watch where your feet went so you didn't step in rubbish or muddy puddles while also having to look up and around you so you didn't walk straight into the hundreds of bodies going in the opposite direction to you, and the assault of smells on your nose - it's not a walk I'd like to do anytime again soon.

We eventually made it to the entrance, paid for our tickets and made it into the fort, which was much quieter than outside. No less than 5mins into our visit, we had locals lining up to take photos with us like we were celebrities! We happily took a few photos, but decided we needed to move on to explore the fort. We spent a couple of hours walking around the impressive 17th century fort.

After the fort, we met up with our walking tour guide for our tour of Old Delhi. We spent 3hrs in Old Delhi, walking in and around Chandni Chowk, Spice Market and some pretty streets. We also visited a Sikh temple including the large kitchen (where they prepare food for 10,000+ people everyday) and the dining hall, where we had some free food. It was a special experience visiting and joining in at the Sikh temple.Read more