The Golden Triangle is a well known tourist route and we decided to add this to to the front of our trekking trip to Ladakh.

Delhi

What an experience! Delhi is one of the most densely populated cities on earth and chaos seems to be the norm, especially on the road. Cars, trucks, buses and motorcycles fight it out with the tuk-tuks, cyclists and pedestrians for space and position on the road.

Pedestrians ignore regular crossing points and weave between the traffic. It's a balletic performance of symmetry that just seems to work. And everyone seems to love honking their horns. We were told this wasn’t to be rude, just to let the other road users know you’re there.

After we checked into the hotel we had lunch and then hired a driver to take us on a quick tour around the city. ‘Quick’ is a relative term in Delhi because the traffic makes it hard to get around. You have to be patient and just enjoy the ride because there’s no point in getting angry. The traffic moves at it’s own pace and you’ll arrive eventually.

Delhi is a growing city that’s noisy, busy and vibrant. It is a growing city with affluent and wealthy people. It also has many people who live on the street and literally manage to scrape a living. The gulf between rich and poor is stark because people live literally on top of each other.

The people we met were mainly middle-class Indians who were all unfailingly polite. In fact, because I traveled with my 20 something year old tall, attractive blond daughter and attractive, but not so tall wife, we got a lot of attention. We were stopped frequently and asked to pose for photographs with couples, families and even newlyweds!

There’s so much to see in this amazing city and we only visited 3 locations, India Gate, Humayanun’s Tomb and the magnificent Lotus Temple. You could literally spend weeks here and still not see everything.

My favourite was the magnificent Lotus Temple, also known as the Baha’i House of Worship. This amazing structure has 27 white marble lotus leaves and it sits in 27 acres of grounds and is surrounded by 9 pools. The interior is sparse and very light with huge windows showing the city, surrounding area and pools. It’s a place of tranquility where you can sit and pray or just take the time to relax and think.

Tomorrow we head for Jaipur which is a 3-4 hour car journey from Delhi. It promises to be quite an experience.