Holey Moley

First impressions – as the A380 approached New Delhi airport, you could see the fog/smog though the windows and it was a real pea soupper.

As the plane underwent decompression with the opening of doors, it didn’t take long for the Delhi air to permeate into the cabin.

After managing my way through immigration and customs, my first view of outdoor Delhi was a sea of people held back waiting for loved ones to also appear from their travels. Besides the people, the noise and taste of the ‘fog’ also struck me. It was described as ‘fog’ by my local guide as we headed off to the car for a 45 minute trip to my hotel.

It appeared that every vehicle on the road had a dint in every panel. And I can understand why after about 2 minutes on the road. There are some parts of the road with line markings, but these are ignored. If it showed 3 lanes, it was not uncommon to have up to six vehicles filling across the road. At some points you could reach your arm out of the window and pass something to the person in the vehicle next to you, except you couldn’t open your window due to the fog!!

And what an adventure that 45 minutes was!

And the road was filled with cars, taxis, ubers, scooters and motorbikes, the most banged up old buses, bikes, motorised rickshaws and walkers!

Beside some sections of the road there were street merchants with carts selling drinks and crisps. Along the route there were at least a dozen police cars just sitting there with lights a blaze on their roof.

And the noise was incredible. Vehicles were tooting everytime they were coming up behind another vehicle to let them know they were squeezing into the gap besides them and not to hit them!!