English-Problem

Touch-down in Delhi Airport, 6am on sunday morning, 29 degrees. After about 1 hour, our luggage is delivered. Oh no, they are all wet....an Indian man next to us reassures us: they have been sprayed with "holy water" on arrival, he tells us .

Aniruddh, our Lahmeyer colleague is waiting for us. He has organised a taxi so we can go to Taj Mahal today: Kake will be your driver and guide, he speaks a little bit of english, tells us Aniruddh....

"English-problem" is about the only english words he knows, yet we are going to have great discussions along our 5 hours drive to Agra, where the Taj Mahal is. We first pass by Aniruddh's place where we are received with great Indian hospitality around a cup of ginger Chai.

As a greeting tradition, Yvonne even receives a couple of bracelets from Aniruddh's wife. On our way to Agra, we stop for breakfast on a road side restaurant to have our first Indian specialities, "Mix Paratha", a sort of fresh oven-backed flat bread with onions, cheese and potatoes: perfect start into the day!

About 1 hour before arriving in Agra, Kake branches off to a side road. He explains us in Indi where we're going, so it'll obviously be a surprise when we get there...

The place is called Balaram Mandir Temple in Vrindavan, where we have to enter barefoot. It is indeed a great surprise and we find ourselves in a Ceremony to a Guru (Krishna). Anthony is greeted with a flower necklace, "welcome home". On our way out after getting our shoes back, Giaco almost got his head chop off from the crazy road traffic.

We finally arrive in Agra in early afternoon, but are stuck in a traffic Jam: a colourful parade has taken over the whole town!

We go the final km to the actual temple on a camel ride..

We finally reach our destination of today: Taj Mahal, where tens of thousands of people are everywhere, almost all of them Indian. We also encounter some colourful inhabitants of the temple garden.

After a looong ride back to Delhi, another nice Meal on the road and 5 hours of loud Indian music, we are finally dropped in our hotel, in a popular neighbourhood of central Delhi, sooo tired from our first day.