Back in Delhi, back in Europe

Our last stop in India was Delhi, since our flight back to Europe was supposed to go from there. As we were approaching Delhi suburbs by train, we recalled our first arrival day to India 4 months ago, our helplessness and terrifying feelings, standing in the middle of the bus station, bunch of Indians around us, everybody wanted something from us, whole-day bus ride on a bumpy road through continuous suburb, hungry, but afraid to eat anything, not to catch some stomach disease.....














Delhi suburbs













Toilet next to a outdoor restaurant - how convenient !













Delhi.....













Red Fort in the center of Delhi

Delhi tourist hub is fortunately quite close to New Delhi train station, so no rickshaws are necessary to find a hostel. However, after 4 months in this part of the world, we had still not learnt that nothing good comes out when you follow a dodgy guy who says that he knows a good and cheap hostel, that is exactly what we are looking for. You only tire yourself by walking with a heavy backpack, waste time and eventually you still have to leave disappointedly and continue your own hostel search.

We had counted with 2 days looking around Delhi before our departure, since during our first visit, we literally escaped from there there same day we arrived.
Nevertheless, we had no idea, that the long-waited and one of the many Indian festivals "Holy" will totally disrupt our plans.

Holy is a religious festival that basically marks the end of the winter and beginning of the hot season. But when in western culture people humbly color eggs, then in India they color each other. It seamed to us that this festival has mainly turned into teenagers event, who enjoy lurking around streets where tourists are and painting their faces, hair and clothes and wishing "Happy Holy" at the same time with a big smile.
For them the festival starts already few days before the main day, when it is so funny to throw colored water bombs at tourists. Thus the day before the main festival day, we were forced to walk around in raincoats...:-)

The main festival day we were forced to sit in our hostel room.
Fortunately we had bargained a room with TV for the lowest possible price, so most of the "festival day" we watched films on HBO. The festival day itself was quite an unusual for a festival day, since our street, which normally was full of people, was now empty and quiet, just few colored dogs or cows, bunch of colored Indian teenagers waiting for some more courageous tourists to pass and few misguided tourists, most of them just coming directly from train station having no idea about what is going on in the city....














Selling paints for Holy



Some pictures from our window to our street on the main festival day (note that this street was usually so full, that is was almost impossible to see the asphalt road under people (and garbage)):













Good business - Even the Holy participants have to eat





















"Happy Holy!"
















Brave tourists















Police ordering the young guys not to disturb tourists















Of course some tourists are also enjoying ...














Waiting for a prey
















Welcoming new comers










































Nobody can stay uncolored during Holy !


In the evening things "calmed down" little bit. Some shops opened again, streets became more busy and we could quickly jump to some shops and market, buy kilo of chai masala and half a kilo of garam masala - treasures of Indian cuisine - and start packing for our early morning flight.



Flying over Afghanistan and Hindukush mountain range...:





















































...and Volga river...:














...until we finally landed in snowy, misty, cloudy, foggy Helsinki.

Our 6 months journey was soon about to end.
Traveling through super hospitable Turkey, gorgeous Iran, poor but magical Nepal and truly incredible India, gave us many positive and negative, funny and sad, absurd and amazing stories to tell, new friends, new ideas and new points of views and more than 10 000 photos.

But as it is said: end of every journey is beginning of a new one....