India - Delhi

Sunday 15/3/2014

As we flew across India there were lights everywhere continually for about two hours, 20 million people approx in Delhi alone.

WOW… We have arrived in India! We passed through immigration without any trouble and met our pickup and headed to coordinators home for the first night as it was too far to travel to our homestay. We stayed in an apartment which was in a block about 10 stories high and in a group of others the same. Rather basic but clean.  The family had a young cook working for them and a nanny for their 18 month old child.  There is a cast system here and the cook was rather shocked that we spoke to her and we weren’t introduced to the nanny even though we were in the same room. She would occasionally glance at us and if we smiled she still didn’t really engage with us.  Very interesting as the apartment wasn’t that big.

At 10 o’clock a driver picked Jim, Marisa (Denver) and I up and we travelled for about an hour to our homestay in Faridabad.  We saw the cows, the beggars, slum areas, rickshaws, tuktuk, maniac traffic, rubbish, a range of buildings, street sellers, markets… all sorts, this is India.  I can’t wait to get some decent photos. The open areas are very scrubby and quite dry at the moment, it is early spring I think. The temperature is cooler and less humid than Bali, so a nice change for us. Matt, everyone rides bikes like yours.

Our homestay is quite good, we have our own room, (the bed is as hard as a board) which is lucky for us as everyone else has to share, it is spacious, and has a fan. The bathroom is shared with all the others, but it’s ok. Granddad gives us a rundown on how to use the shower, and they don’t have toilet paper or use it here, so we have our own supplies.  I haven’t asked the question you are just thinking!  The house is on three levels and also a roof area where we seem to congregate.

There is the Happy Holi Colour Festival tomorrow so we have purchased white tee-shirts. Similar to a colour run in NZ.

We have just heard the senior man of the house tell one of the volunteers we cannot go out alone tomorrow,” it will be trouble, we will be ‘clothes destroyed , that is not good, we will take you for the festival, stay inside the gate and you will see and we will enjoy with you”. Jim and I are giggling away. 

There are 7 other volunteers here at the moment, but we are all doing different things so some move on after the weekend, to either the orphanage or to different sectors of the city as they are called.  So have yet to sort out who we will be hanging out with apart from Marisa. Everyone is very nice.