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My first day. It was a day of great mistake and a day of great joy. This day I met my first friend in India. Suraj, this day was about you.
Everything around was amazing. These men in the streets who were wearing scarves on their heads like our old women usually do; palms in night sky, smog all around (or maybe that was fog because of cold as my first taxi driver said). But this kind of cold… I don’t think it was really cold there. Conversely that time I was feeling like it was very warm there and I wanted to go out the car to breath this air. I was motoring by taxi from airport to Main Bazaar. You know, when I came to Delhi I had no idea where to stay (this kind of situation was rather typical for me in this trip and I enjoyed it a lot). So in the airport there was a place for booking hotel and taxi. It wasn’t really good price for a hotel, later I talked to the hotel owner and new price was half.
I arrived to Delhi in nighttime. In the morning I woke up from loud horning sounds from outside (that was a way how I knew that it’s true that Indians wake up early). And 2 hours later I was staying in the center of my room thinking “Now I have to go out, I have to go out… What will happen I wonder”. So I’ve done it.
Everything there you find an ordinary thing but for me it was surprising and absolutely new. First I was a little scared but many people around smiled to me, greeted me “Hello! How are you? Where are you from?” and I felt better.
I can tell much about this first day. I truly loved it. Do you know, before going to India while reading tourist issues about it in internet I found one popular belief about India. It said that India can call people or keep them out and that depends of what is that person. There are a lot of cases when people who were not ready to go to India were losing their passports just before the trip or it happened something else that didn’t allow them go to India. And it’s also said that there are 2 kind of people – those who fall in love with India at first sight and those who see only dirt and poverty and can’t understand India at all. My chance to go to India was so illusory I doubted it can happen with me. But all the fortuities happened to me were helping me, like everything was encourage me to go to India. And I liked it very much.
My great mistake was to come to travel agency. It also was a sudden decision. I wanted only to buy train tickets with their help. But I gave them more than a half of my money thinking I’m paying for tickets only. To say the true they helped me to plan my trip. Before I know only some places I wanted to visit. After this day I had a schedule when and where I would go and for how long. Also the true is that I paid not only for tickets as they said me, but for a tour… I realized it only afterwards. That person said “now you can go to have a look on some places of interest in Delhi by taxi. This is our gesture of respect for you”. That was how I met Suraj, the driver of this taxi.
We are the same age, 22. Suraj has a good dress style and difficult for me English pronunciation. I was looking at everything around and he explains me every strange thing. Suraj was the best kind of guide for me. He brought me to the place of interest and was waiting for me outside. We also went buying, he showed me a lot of shops with Indian clothes so I could choose something for me. I took only few clothes with me so it was what I needed.