Here are the quickies:

• Time of Year: April 13 & April 25-28
• City: New Delhi
• Airport: Indira Gandhi International Airport
• Accommodation: Hotel Shanti Plaza & DoubleTree by Hilton Gurgaon

Delhi – probably the most well-known city of India. With the official numbers stating the population (as of 2019) at just above 19 million, we did have a guide explain that these are only the registered citizens… When including the amount of people living on the streets or who are unregistered, there are estimates that put the population up to 29.5 million people! That’s about the same as the entire country of Yemen… Ok, maybe you don’t know much about the population of Yemen (I didn’t…), so here’s the link to the Worldometer that lists countries by populations so you can compare Delhi’s population to a country you do know more about.

It was crazy how much the temperatures varied from April 13 (warm, but manageable – maybe around 25-28°C) to when we returned April 25 – it was then 40-42°C in Delhi!!! It also got more humid later in the trip.

So, I have a funny story for you:

Because we initially flew into New Delhi from London arriving in the middle of the night, and had to fly to Jaipur the next morning, we wanted to book a room in Aerocity, which is a place close to the airport that is just full of airport hotels. We only had about a 6 hour layover, but it was long enough we didn’t want to sleep on an airport chair, but short enough that we didn’t want to spend money on a super fancy hotel. So, Kevin books us at the 3-star Hotel Shanti Palace… or so we thought. In the meantime, our British Airways flight from London Heathrow to New Delhi got cancelled and we had to re-book to fly out a night early. This actually wasn’t bad since it got us into New Delhi around 9am, meaning we didn’t need to book an extra hotel night and gained a day to explore Delhi. Perfect.

So, once in New Delhi, we made our way to the taxi stands and showed several drivers the name and address of our hotel. I kept getting confused when they all gave looks of confusion and repeatedly asked if we were sure that’s where we wanted to go.

30-minutes into our drive, I turned to Kevin and said…

“I thought this hotel was close to the airport? It was only suppose to be a 10-minute drive.”

10-minutes later, we were driving along the streets of the slums and Google Maps said we should be there in no more than 2 blocks… The optimistic me just kept thinking it might be the case where the slum would finish coming up at the next intersection and there’d be a miraculous transformation of scenery that felt a little more developed. I was wrong. Sure enough, our taxi finally found our hotel and we were dodging the dirt, street vendors, stray dogs, and broken down machinery to get to the lobby entrance. Meanwhile, Kevin is still positive that this is the right hotel, but must’ve just had a horrible online ad.

Once we signed in… he finally realizes that he meant to book us at the Hotel Shanti PALACE… not the Hotel Shanti Plaza! We both had a massive laugh and decided we might as well check out what the room was like and to our surprise, it wasn’t half bad! Despite the location, the hotel is listed on TripAdvisor and the room was kept quite clean the bed was in one-piece. The bathroom was in a bit more of a despair, but still manageable. So, we stayed and enjoyed being thrown into the midst of central Paharganj, Delhi.

Fortunately, this area was within walking distance from the New Delhi Train Station and the locals were obviously use to backpackers and tourists. Once we navigated the broken sidewalk bricks, we made our way towards the central ring of New Delhi in hopes to find somewhere to eat and just explore.

The people are so friendly in Delhi! At first, I was skeptical assuming everyone was trying to scam me or sell me something… but after the fourth or fifth stranger genuinely asking our background and our travel plans and offering directions and notifying us of things to look out for, I realized that the Indian nature (at least in New Delhi) was that of kindness and pure curiosity. One of the taxi drivers refused our tip in rupees and just wanted a Canadian Loonie. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any foreign coins on me, but I did rub it in Kevin’s face that he asked for a Loonie and not a Swiss Frank. Obviously value was not the intent here…

When we returned to New Delhi for the last few days of our trip, I had arranged a special celebratory anniversary couple’s massage and spa day at the Aheli Spa at The Roseatte Hotel. It was an amazing experience as we tried out the Ayur Shanta Treatment that performed the traditional Indian Ayurveda techniques.

For the last few days of our trip, we stayed at the DoubleTree Gurgaon and hired a car and driver to take us around Delhi to see some of the sights. It’s a very large city so we split it up to visit New Delhi on one day and Old Delhi on another.

We did a walking tour through the deep inner streets of Old Delhi to really experience what their everyday is like and wow – it was eye-opening. I wanted to compare it to the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro or the Hutongs of Beijing, but it really was it’s own.

Amidst the crazy underdevelopment and just trashed streets, deep below in Delhi’s Underground Metro, it was like I had found that change in scenery I was yearning for our first day driving in the slums looking for the Hotel Shanti Plaza… It was in better shape than the London Underground (clearly what they were trying to mimic) AND it was air-conditioned!! Simply amazing and probably one of the best ways to get around on extremely hot days!

Check out my travels on Instagram #EarthDragonTravels.