On the 13th of August we started our trip to India. About 18 hours of the "most comfortable airplane seats" and a few hours of waiting in between we made it to our first destination...Delhi, India. 

At 8:57 pm we finally crossed the mandatory customs and immigration police, crossed the gates and boom, our first surprise, no one to pick us up. 

We loaded up and got into the mini bus taxi, which smelled like incense and cigarettes, the perfect combo after a long ass flight. The driver Ali, a guy of about 25 years of old was very exited to see us and definitely tried to drive us as fast as possible through the streets of Delhi. He thought that's what we wanted, but we definitely preferred to avoid accidents.

We arrived to our hotel, The Smily Inn.... ummmm a “five star” the hole in the wall. Located in an obscure and dark alley in the middle of the crazy market were the natives had been doing their deed against the walls and in the street along with the cows roaming free in the middle of the road and feeding off the early morning newspaper. 

We negotiated our stay and got into our room. Actually, not too bad it had AC and cable TV, a little dirty but what the hell. We were spent from our travel and our jet lag. 

The next day we went on our recon trip along the market. ... ummm is my favorite word on this trip, As soon as we stepped into the street we almost got run over by a rickshaw that was trying to miss the cow standing in the middle of the road. It was then that, we realized that also in India people become easy targets and pedestrians are at the bottom of the food chainlist. 

Overwhelmed by the heat, the humidity and the traffic in the market we went back to the “hotel” and rested for the rest of the day trying to recuperate from the jet lag. 

In the morning we got prepared and assaulted the market again, this time with the purpose of finding our bus ticket to get to our destination, Manali.

Manali is a small town located on the northern part of India in the mouth of the Himalaya, Himachal. After running around in circles... literally... we decided to hire the service that our hotel provided. 

The next day we returned to the market to shop for new clothes that would help us feel a little closer to the culture and hopefully allow us to get less ripped off when buying goods from the locals. 

In the afternoon we finally checked out of our “fancy 5 star hotel” and hired a rickshaw to take our expedition bags to the bus station. To our surprise the bus was really nice, with space for your legs, nice comfortable seats and one crazy driver that was going to drive the whole way pulling off an all-nighter. 

18 hours.... Its not over yet... at that point the driver had to pull over because everyone from the Indian team were barfing their guts out...oughhh oughhh was all we could hear in back of the bus.... ummmm disturbing when it sounds like a chorus from all the people gagging at the same time.