Well once again my blog post begins with an apology for not posting the updates I promised, however there is justification this time! We were caught in the bombs that went off in Delhi.

Tali arrived in Delhi and I picked her up from the airport on the 13th. We dropped her stuff off at a nice hotel I had booked near Connaught Place which is the city centre of Delhi and the business hub. We got an auto rickshaw into Connaught Place and had lunch at a fancy restaurant, and then walked around for a while checking out the shops.

Later that day we went back to our hotel and chilled out for the afternoon and crashed early as Tali was very jetlagged. In the morning, Shane and Nicola came around to our hotel at 11am and we caught the train to Old Delhi to see the Red Fort. After that we walked through the hectic markets of Old Delhi and went to a great restaurant to get Tali an authentic Indian feast.

It was a hot day and we got the train back to our hotel around 2pm, drained from the humidity and the craziness of Old Delhi which is so so busy. Shane and Nicola told us to check out the markets just up the road from our hotel in the afternoon, and we then organised to meet at our hotel at 6pm for drinks and have dinner at Connaught Place.

Tali and I were keen to go to the markets, but we crashed out and didn’t wake up until 5ish. At 6pm we waited in our courtyard and had a beer with two guys who were also staying at our hotel. They were good blokes and had done a lot of trekking around the world including the Annapurna Circuit. Shane and Nicola still hadn’t arrived at 6.30pm and we just thought they had fallen asleep or were running late.

I can’t remember the exact time they arrived but I think it was around 6.40pm. They appeared in our front garden, Shane covered in sweat and his face had a really weird shocked expression on it. He said “there’s been a bomb. We just saw a bomb go off”. Nicola started crying and we realised how serious it was. We turned on the tv and the news was already showing videos of women being carried away covered in blood, dripping on the floor, and there was debri and people everywhere. We were scared shitless…

Shane and Nicola had been in an autorickshaw heading for our place when the bomb had gone off in the markets 150m in front of them. These were the markets Tali and I were going to go to that afternoon and the markets Shane and Nicola had been at the day before. The only reason Shane and Nicola were 150m away and not closer is that Shane was arguing with the driver over the price. The two of them had to run to a train station and fight with crowds of people to get onto the train amid the uncertainty of whether other blasts were going to go off. It was genuine fear for their lives.

As we watched the news, we discovered 5 bombs had gone off and the death toll was rising. I think it is sitting around 22 dead now. An Islamic group claimed responsibility which really cemented the fact we were caught in the middle of a terrorist attack. We called our parents right away to tell them we were ok, and then we called the Australian Embassy to seek advice. We didn’t know whether to get the next flight out of Delhi or sit tight.

We had a train booked for Agra the next morning and after a long talk we decided to stick to that. The problem was that Shane and Nicola’s hotel was right next to where the bomb went off and they had to leave our hotel to go back to theirs and pack their bags and get their pasports. They left about 10pm and the bomb squad had found 3 more bombs and were still searching for more. I can’t imagine what that auto rickshaw back to their hotel would have been like as they had to go right past the bomb site.

Shane and Nicola were so lucky and so were we. The other bombs went off in Connaught Place which is where we would have been having drinks if Shane and Nicola were on time. They were running late because Shane was watching soccer (typical Shane). I didn’t sleep much that night - it was bad enough our hotel was in the vacinity, but what freaked me out was that two of our friends were one minute away from potentially getting blown up and it was the tiniest of variables that prevented it. You can rationalise all those variables and the reasons why we avoided the bombs are logical, but I think now there’s something else - luck, fate or some reason why everything came together to keep us safe. I dunno - but it’s good to be in Agra.

We’re staying here for 2 more days and just to be safe, we’re getting a private car straight to Delhi airport - neither of us want to get on a train to Delhi.

Anyway, we’re heading off to see the Taj Mahal and check out the sites of Agra. Tomorrow we’re going to an expensive hotel and are going to chill at their pool for the day and drink overpriced cocktails. I know i keep breaking the chronology of the blog, but after this I will get you up to date with Amritsar.

I am sorry the blog has been quiet since I got here. I have been meaning to post comments, but it has been rather hectic since I landed. Right now I am sitting in an internet cafe in Nepal/ Kathmandu and an unusual spider is taunting me - I will get him eventually. I’m going to tell you about my last 4 days which begun in Delhi, moved to Jaipur, back to Delhi and then to Nepal.

Sorry if this post is too long, I haven’t spoken to any Europeans since I got here so I have a lot of words built up.

Landing in Delhi was an absolute trip out and nothing could have prepared me for how crazy it was. There were people everywhere, rubbish everywhere, cows, slums - it was entirely overwhelming. I had imagined that I would be strutting around the streets hanging with locals as soon as I landed, but it didn’t turn out that way. When my taxi dropped me off in the street, I was scared shitless.

No book can prepare you for the poverty. Kids naked in pools of shit filled water, surrounded by rubbish. The heat is beyond excessive and the putrid air is debilitating. The eyes of the children reflect a world of pain I could never comprehend. I was so arrogant to think I would just waltz in unaffected.

I found a hotel and got seriously ripped off but I didn’t care because I just wanted to get my bag down. I sat in my 5m x 5m room and the enormity of being in downtown Delhi hit me with brutal force and I just burst into tears. It sounds pathetic but the poverty was just astounding. Poor people’s lives don’t matter here. They have no way to make money except to beg - if they can’t beg, they die. If they get sick, they die. And no one gives a shit because there are just so many of them.

I left my hotel and went for a walk and found an internet cafe. I came on msn and flipped out to Tali - I just needed to talk to someone as I felt so far away from everything. Tali told me to calm down and to go and meet people and it’d be alright.

So I went for a walk to see if I could find people to hang with. The temperature was about 38 degrees and every inch of my skin erupted with droplets of sweat - it was pouring off me. As I was walking, a voice called out to me “hey man, how are you?”

I walked over to an Indian man in his 30’s and said I was good, and we struck up a conversation. His name was Tony and he was obviously educated. We spoke about Australia, business, India, and my dreadlocks - he was very keen to know about them. Two other men walked over and introduced themselves as Hakim and Deepak. After a few minutes a girl in her 20’s also joined the conversation. We were sizing each other up and I couldn’t work out if they were genuinely interested in a conversation, or if they were trying to hustle me. Tony had a big child-like laugh and I liked him immediately. Hakim was obviously dodgy but for some reason I liked him too. Deepak had long greasy hair and he was pretty quiet - along with the girl.

I ask Hakim where to go in Delhi and he tells me they are driving to the markets and do I want to come with the four of them. I size him up and think about it for a moment. Logic told me getting into a car with 3 guys after being in Delhi for 10 minutes isn’t smart, but my intuition told me to go for it. I thought, screw it, nothing great comes without risk. So I said yes and we started driving.

We never made the markets, instead we drove around for a few hours making ‘business’ stops. The boot kept opening and envelopes were being swapped with other men. I couldn’t work out if this business was illegal but Tony and Hakim didn’t seem menacing so I went with the flow. However I felt very out of control in this situation and was quite tense.

After a few hours Tony turns to me and says they are driving back to Jaipur and do I want to come with them? I asked how far it was and he said 2.5 hours. He said they’d show me around and take me out to the club. I asked him how much and he looked genuinely hurt and he goes serious and says:

“Daniel, there are two kinds of relationships - business and friendship. I have offered you a seat in my car because we are strange friends. By offering me money you have changed the nature of this friendship to business”

I felt ashamed I had asked, but India is like that - you never know who is a friend and who is business.

I agree to come and we go back to my hotel and get my bags. I packed up my stuff and I was thinking to myself “shit Daniel, you’re getting yourself into an etch situation” but I just went along with it because sometimes fate beckons us to choose the unknown road.

I still didn’t have any money on me so Hakim lent it to me. We drove around Delhi some more doing ‘business’ and as the boot was opened by various men, I was sure my bag was going to get stolen.

We finally hit the road and they got a truckload of food from a local spot. I fell asleep at this point because I was absolutely knackered. I woke up sometime later and they still hadn’t eaten - they were waiting for me to wake up. They gave me a curry and watched me take the first bite. I didn’t react, but it was the spiciest thing to ever enter my mouth. It felt like it was exploding and I broke out into a sweat and went bright red.

“You like?”

“mmm it’s fantastic” I say, trying not to choke. I just couldn’t eat it so I politely moved some food around on the plate and then passed it around. We then stopped at a bottle shop and they got a bottle of whisky and fosters beer. They turned on some house music insanely loud and we hit the whisky. The way to any Indian man’s heart is a bottle of whisky.

The highway was incredible. We were screaming down it at 120km dodging cows, trucks, push bikes - honking the whole way. Drivers in India actually go for cows and dogs to see how close they can get - it’s full on and there’s no seatbelts. The music was so loud it was distorted and the whole situation was bizarre.

We then hit the fosters (including the driver). I told him to go easy on the beer while he was driving and he said “Sir, you can not drive in India unless you are drinking. Everyone is drinking - the trucks are all drinking, it is the only way to survive these roads”. Well you can’t argue with such flawless logic.

I was getting pretty pissed as we had been driving for a long time - I wasn’t sure how long because I didn’t have a watch. Hakim asked me what music I liked and I said rock so he put on Bon Jovi - It’s my life.

We were screaming down the highway, dancing in our seats and shouting “it’s my life, it’s now or never, and I aint gunno live foreverrrr”. And I have to say it felt awesome. It was so out of control - I was in the middle of nowhere with a carload of people I’d just met, and I was shouting and dancing at the top of my lungs.

The thing that has stuck with me the most was something Hakim said to me while we were pissing by the road:

“Daniel, I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. But we are connected by the Gods and our good karma. I know you are on a journey you have worked hard for and we want to make it as pleasant as possible for you”.

After the piss I went to get back in the car and Hakim said “Ohh Daniel you must wash your hands. Indians are very clean people”. We had just pissed in front of hundreds of people on the side of the road where they were walking (which was ok) but not pouring 100ml of bottled water on my hands isn’t ok. Indians are funny people.

We finally got to the hotel at 1am, about 11-12 hours after I got in the car with them.

I was starving when I went to bed - I hadn’t eaten anything all day. I woke up hungover with a bad feeling in my stomach. I walked outside in Jaipur and discovered I was in what looked like a slum. Outside my dodgy hotel a pack of wild pigs were fighting each other in a huge pile of rubbish which smelt so bad I could taste it on my tongue. Further down the road a mangy dog was eating a dead kitten which was drying up in the sun.

I couldn’t find any food I could eat - the coffee was nescafe being boiled in pots with flies all around it. The food was being made in stalls on the street. After few hours I panicked. I was so hungry and jet lagged and I decided to bail for Nepal. I jumped a taxi to the airport, flew to Delhi. Spent a night there, then got a plane to Kathmandu - total disregard for money and Hakim, Tony, Deepak, and the girl.

It was a horrible thing I did, bailing like that, but I had to get out of there. India is full on and I was unprepared for it. But it’s all good - it’s not a fail if you learn from it, and I learned a valuable lesson.