Our arrival in Delhi was not all that horrible, but it definitely left us missing Nepal! We arrived around 6pm, so the sun had gone down already.
To start off, we had organized airport pickup directly with the hotel (and prepaid for it), but when we arrived we couldn't find anyone holding up our names despite walking back and forth in front of the long line of people with signs multiple times, and then going outside and doing the same in front of the second group of people with signs. As some of the only white tourists coming from Kathmandu, and with our big packs, we stood out enough for another driver to come over to us with his list of pickups asking if we were the people that he was trying to find. So we definitely gave every chance we could for our driver to find us! The email the hotel had sent us basically also warned us that the prepaid taxi they were arranging would possibly try to bring us to another hotel so be very careful and make sure he brought us to the right one - so our trust in their driver was already low! Upon waiting around for 15-20 minutes we just decided to hop in a taxi, assuming that our pick up was not coming.
What shocked me the most about the Delhi airport was the lack of hassling! We were prepared to be bombarded by taxi drivers like in other countries we had been in but nobody bugged us despite us standing there looking like lost souls. Walking outside we were met with THICK smoke. We had thought Nepal was bad for smoke, but this was the worst we had encountered so far. As we hopped into a taxi, we drove through the smoky haze in honking traffic as cars weaved in and out of buses and motorbikes. It was all very similar to Nepal, but the roads were much nicer and modern! When we got to the neighbourhood our hotel was in (Karol Bagh), our taxi looked at the address again and scratched his head. He had no idea where the hotel was. Great! Luckily he called them and we managed to find our way.
Checking into the hotel we told the manager that the driver had not shown up, and instead of apologizing he insisted the driver was still there waiting for us and that he had been here since 5pm. So here we were frustrated with our journey there and now we had the manager arguing with us (without even asking us if we had properly looked for the driver or anything). Ugh welcome to India!
We got checked into our room, which was nice and the wifi was fast, but the room was completely filled with smoke from people burning rubbish and other things just outside our window. We asked the hotel for a recommendation for a nicer place to grab a bite to eat, and one of the porters was all too keen to lead us a few blocks away through a bright red door to a placed called Pocket Bar. We walked into a small dark bar with red lights beaming down, and wailing with a loud echo coming through speakers from what we thought was Indian karaoke, but it was actually the talent for the night. We both looked at each other and thought, this is the LAST place we feel like having dinner at!
By then our porter had already shaken hands with the restaurant owner and likely slipped a tip for the business and had seated us directly in front of the singers. We thought about leaving but had no idea where else to go, so decided to order and eat as quickly as we could and get back to our smoky hotel room. I'm pretty sure the bar owner was an Indian relative of Rob Ford. As I said, it wasn't all that horrible of an experience, but in comparison to the wonderful dinner we had enjoyed the night before in Kathmandu, we felt like we had found Hell, and it was a little bar in Karol Bagh called Pocket Bar.
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