Finally an update

Well it's been approximately three weeks since I left the UK and it feels like I've been here for years. I'll try not to go on for ages with all the details but in a nutshell it's been a challenge. I'll start with a brief run-down of my first days in India with Sam. Upon arriving in Bangalore (literally for just the one night) we got a hair raising taxi journey (not uncommon) to the Bangalore Gate hotel. This was our first look at India and it was stray dogs, makeshift houses on the side of the road, autorickshaws, brightly painted lorries, people walking out into traffic seemingly oblivious of the danger, dust, roadside shacks selling food...and all this at about 5am. The city was waking up.
As it goes we didn't really spend any time in Bangalore on this first day, rather we just conked out in recovery from time changes and long haul flights. Though around 3pm I suggested to Sam we go for a wander. The roads around our hotel were chocka block and crossing the road was a battle of wits. Unsuspecting, jet-lagged Westerners beware! We finally found ourselves on a main thoroughfare which was a pavement puzzle of varying sizes, shapes and pot-holes. Navigating this, the rubbish on the streets, people in all directions and the odd vehicle up on the pavement was something Bangaloreans have obviously mastered at youth.

After an hour of wandering the maze of streets we eventually happened upon a fruit bar selling milkshake type concoctions and this provided some welcome relief to the dust and petrol fumes. We hadn't seen another Westerner since arriving in Bangalore, and the staff at the fruit bar were eyeing us like we might eye the Hindu temple up the road. This took some getting used to. Shortly after this we retreated to the hotel and the relative safety of the National Geographic channel and room service food, which was particularly good at this hotel.

5am on day two we're back in a taxi to the airport to head to Delhi. This was a 5 hour round journey from hotel to hotel. In Delhi we were greeted with much the same sights and sounds and smells just in greater proportions. We got to our hotel (which was nasty - less said about this the better) and began to gather our senses to start exploring. This first day would turn out to be a sharp learning curve. To cut a long story short, if you're a Westerner in Delhi, if you look in the slightest like you might not know where your going, if you show the slightest hesitation there are hordes of people just waiting for you. This is usually in the various guises of scams. Despite having read about these scams I still fell prey to it, so I would caution anyone staying in the Karol Bach district or whenever visiting Connaught Place. This first day Sam and I would write off as experience, peg it up as never happening again. Unfortunately we spoke too soon but that's another story.
To cut to the chase, we found the Government Tourist office after quite some time and negotiation, and booked a trip to Agra.
The following day we found a little bit of peace and tranquility at India Gate in New Delhi - it was a relief to get away from the noise and the scammers. Though there were plenty of street sellers, at one point we were surrounded by purveyors of postcards, nick-nacks and cobras - photos, buy, look, excuse me. There was another incident where a small boy with a painted on moustache and a crazy hat danced for us and climbed through impossibly small hoops. This was so funny we couldn't help but hand over a tip.
Day 3 in Delhi saw us rise at 5am to get ready and find a rickshaw to the Central Tourist office (this was after a rather fraught night of insomnia and the infamous Delhi belly - there is no escape!). It doesn't get light until around 7am in India and I was a little anxious wondering about on dark, empty streets and all the auto drivers appeared to be asleep in the back of their vehicles. After some pansying around, we eventually just bit the bullet and jumped in an auto and got going. It is also really cold in India before the sun comes up, and there was a real bite in the air. After a completely mad 45 minutes including driving like crazy on dark streets watching the people and the fires lit, a temple which we had no interest in going to, a mad flower market and a very helpful Indian man we made it to the office.
The rest is yet another of the Indian experiences that I will never forget. A 5 hour drive to Agra, driving into on coming traffic, using five lanes when there are only two, knocking motorbikes, driving up the back of autos with an impossible number of people riding in, on and around them, so that their toes touched the front of our bus. We made it to the Taj Mahal and it was breath-taking. We also met some great people on this trip and it was one of the highlights.
The rest of the time in Delhi I'll surmise: Old Delhi, Sikh festival, more scams, more insomnia, more traffic, the Red Fort, Idly, lassies, Darjeeling tea, dust, excuse me come look at my shop...you get the picture.
Sam and I then had the great fortune of yet another experience of getting the train from Delhi to Bangalore. Now, first class on Indian trains is nice enough - you get a private cabin, it locks, it's air conditioned. There are still cockroaches though and plenty of them, all coming out of the sink. 36 hours on a train is something else, and unfortunately the view out of the window was slightly obscured by some odd paint that was lavished all over it. I was also very unwell, and trust me you don't want to be unwell in India on a train. It just ain't pretty. We spent most of our time trying to interpret the cat-calls of the various sellers of food and drink that pace up and down the train throughout the journey. I'm pretty sure I speak for both Sam and I when I say we were glad to be off that train, though even this produces an effect not dissimilar to being on a boat for 36 hours; you feel like you're still on it even when you get off. This was producing a very disorientating effect at the hotel.
We stayed at the Tricolor in Bangalore which was a pleasantly clean change from all our previous dwellings. The unfortunate attacks in Mumbai had made us both feel a little uncomfortable and so we spent most of our time in this hotel watching the situation unfold on the news and trying to get updates about what was going on in Bangkok. The room service wasn't a patch on the first hotel and after 3 days of the same tasting green curry I was about to go mad.
Sam left on Saturday morning to get his plane home I hope with some sort of "life experience" or whatever you want to call it. The rickshaws, the bus trip, the scammers, the food, India Gate, the Taj, the Delhi belly, the cockroaches, the little children saying hello, the mothers and children begging and sleeping on the side of traffic chocked roads, the queues at the metro, the nice man who told us to go home and have a beer and relax, Mr Singh and his birthday, the little boy with the moustache and it all.