1rst post - WE MADE IT TO INDIA

Dear Family, Friends and Followers

Thank you so much for taking the time to read these posts and follow our blog. 

First of all thank you so much for your patience. It took us forever to be able to find the time and the place to update our blog. 

Our travel when suprisingly smoothly, we took 3 planes: Phoenix to San Francisco (2h), then to Newark(8h) then to Delhi(13h). 

Upon our arrival we were greeted by our driver sent by our hostel for our airport transfer for about 10dollars us. Many many drivers were waiting in front of the airport, holding name cards for their clients, it was impressive to see 100-150 men shouting out names. Then was the great adventure of experiencing driving in India !

the first culture shock was to realize that traffic lights, traffic lanes and speed limits are a recommendation apparently. On a 50km/hr road we averaged about 70km/hr in a small taxi minibus probably the size of a small car with no front. Peeks were at 90km/hr  when sqeezing between semi's and avoiding bicyclist and horse carriage. The second impressive transportation culture shock is that all this anarchy creates a remarkable dance, without accidents, or road rage, just a lock of honking and fast pace peeks in mirrors.

The heat is dry here, so far, therefore it's warm but not overwhelming yet. Our hostel is located in a very busy and poor side of town in between the new delhi and the market part of town. At first it was interesting to put up with the amount of people asking us to give money, to use their rickshaw (cab like/scooter 3 wheeler), or to buy their food cooked on the floor in the backstreet. But now it feels like a normal part of life, people are very welcoming yet very quickly will do anything they can for money. Every place we have visited prices for entries can be about 200-300 rupees for foreigners and 5 for Indian tourists.

In terms of our activity our first was to figure out the money situation. For those of you who want to learn about the travel experience: we had checked in with our respective banks prior to departure and found out that most american cards will charge us about 3% of the withdraw amount for fee, and the conversion rate here is about 42-43 rupees for a dollar when the actual exchange rate is 44. Not so bad, noticing how strong the dollar is. 

In terms of expenses, if you are planning on doing something similar to us, here is our list:

airfare: 1300 dollars booked at least 4months in advance, Visa for 6months 75 dollars takes at least 10days to get it,.vaccines: Hep A (2 shots 6 months apart, 85$), Typhoid( 80$ for 5 years), malaria meds (20$), we chose not to do rabbies for 300$ because we weren't planning on interacting with animals, HepB is also required; hotels in Delhi (1300 rupees for 2 for 2 nights- recall this is on the cheaper end of things), food ( about 100-200 rupees depending if you want a sit down AC place or more local).

I cannot think of any additional logistics to post but if you have anything extra you'd like to know, feel free to comment on this post or shoot me an email.

Cheers,

Mo.