Arrival in Delhi and first impressions: Organized chaos or chaotic organization?

The day of departure has finally come!
Surprisingly, it took me only ~1 hour to pack all of my belongings to a suitcase. Prior to going to the airport, I decided to go to the office to deliver on all my commitments say goodbye to the colleagues whom I will not see for the next five weeks.

My team and myself - other than usual, not in the center

After a short train ride and standard check-in formalities, I was already standing at the gate. Since six team members took the same flight from Munich to Delhi, we decided to meet prior to the take-off to say hi. Luckily enough, we were able to find each other (the BluePages pictures did not differ that much from the reality), however, Alessandra,- our colleague from Italy,- got stuck in Milan due to a flight cancellation and will have to take the next flight to Delhi.

The flight went quite well, with three middle seats only for myself I had a bit of space to stretch my legs. After some seven hours in the air and 6,000 kilometers, I have arrived to India for the first time!

Tired, by excited: Just arrived to Delhi

The very moment we left the airport and went to our hotel, three things struck me: It is warm (I am not used to 20°C in the beginning of February), it is loud and it is chaotic. Sometimes, people refer to different cities, e.g. Paris, Naples, Moscow, Beijing to describe odd driving habits and difficult traffic situation. However, Delhi felt like a whole new level of this cliché to me. A seemingly endless sea of vehicles (from cow carriage to tuktuk to truck) is flowing through the city, accompanied by a deafening noise of honking. Honking as such seems to be a universal notification, which is just applied all the time for any reason (or without it). However, the most stunning observation is that this organized chaos or chaotic organization works and that there are no accidents. At least during the day today, I have not seen any, although my intuition continuously said that a vehicle is going to hit another one or a person any second.

Traffic in Delhi

In order to fight our jetlag, I decided not to take any nap and explore the city with my team instead. However, the traffic situation did not allow to see too many sights. Nevertheless, we were able to go to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites: The Red Fort as well as the Humayun's Tomb. Especially the latter monument, which is the tomb of a Mughal Emperor, was a real highlight. And, of course, I had my first Indian food in India - a delicious vegetable biryani.

Humayun's tomb

Red fort

I will have the opportunity to explore Delhi a bit more when I return from Ludhiana - now, it is time to get some sleep before taking an early morning train to Punjab!