We’ve been in Delhi for three days now. We leave for Rajasthan the day after tomorrow. But let me tell you what we’ve been doing. Because Delhi is worth telling stories about.

The flight out was odd somehow. The flight to Hong Kong was delayed a little, so we didn’t have a great deal of time to transfer to the Delhi flight. The second flight was very cramped, but manageable. But these things are not what made it weird. Pre-COVID, we’d happily jump on a flight to Europe, catch up on movies we’d missed, and just accept that long flights were the price you pay for living in Australia. Nonetheless, this was the longest post-COVID flight I’d done, and it felt interminable. Maybe we’re out of practice.

We landed, and my pre-trip organisational OCD paid off. Baggage was there. Our driver knew the way. The hotel was open, and we checked in and slept for two hours.

Incidentally, I’d bought some tiles—electronic tags that you can track your luggage with. They worked pretty well too…when we landed in Delhi, they notified us that the bags had also arrived and gave us a heads-up when they were about to come out of the chute onto the collection turnstile.

The first day was about errands. On what sleep we could muster, we launched ourselves into Delhi. I’d been here before, so I knew what to expect. Dalma had not and found it a bit confronting. Mostly, she found people coming up to us and trying to guide us to markets annoying. It didn’t worry me a huge amount—everyone has to make a living, and they (sometimes) lost interest when I said I’d lived here before and was able to name where. We got local SIM cards and bought helmets and claw bags from the deservedly renowned Chopra’s at Karol Bagh.

Old bikes in Karol Baghu
These are gorgeous!

I’d had my eye on a Nirvik jacket from Royal Enfield. We tried to buy it at their showroom near Karol Bagh, but they only had black ones, and their card facility wouldn’t accept our Australian cards. This seems quite a thing with Royal Enfield: they make decent motorbikes, but dealing directly with them as a foreigner is quite difficult. They geolock you out of their stores if you’re in Australia, and you can’t use overseas cards. I guess they want you to deal with the folk in your country.

We were exhausted by this point (2pm), so we stumbled around and found the renowned Sita Ram Diwan Chand, a Punjabi vegetarian restaurant that serves chole bhature. We ordered the full plate and a lassi, which turned out to be delicious. After this, we wandered back to bed, Dalma somewhat dazed, fell asleep at 4pm, and slept long and soundly.

The next day, we went back to Chopra’s and acquired the same Nirvik jacket that Royal Enfield had recently been so keen to keep me from. They even had the brown colour I preferred. Then we had to hightail it back to the hotel to collect (and pay for) our bikes: two rough but seemingly sound Himalayans: Billie Two (because it’s similar to my bike from home) and Hiho (because silver).

Hiho and Billie Two
New Jacket Day
Night Market

In the evening, we went out to a western bar (for a little taste of home), and emerged an hour later to find a market had set up around us. We spent a happy couple of hours wandering around, taking photos, and just immersing ourselves in crazy Delhi.

And now, this is our last day here. We’re going to play tourist and go and check out Old Delhi and the Red Fort. We need to pack, mount a couple of things on the bikes, and we’ll be leaving for our first big day of riding tomorrow. We’ll leave at 7am to beat much of the Delhi traffic, and (hopefully) get to Mandawa a few hundred kilometres away. Dalma’s a bit apprehensive, and I’ve never ridden in Delhi before, but as Dalma said, you can’t always live a safe, comfortable life. You’ve got to challenge yourself.

So here’s to us challenging ourselves.