Our escape from India

A big congratulations to Mike and Mandy, Gandhi and Leanne and Pash and Karen for the new arrivals! Plus everyone else in Guisborough who is having babies. We won't be able to move when we get home.

Hello Clivey baby Donaldson, please email me on your private email as I cannot reply on the works email. Hope things are going well.

After one day in Delhi we were struck down with Delhi belly for 8 days! Possibly food poisoning! We were unable to eat anything for 48 hours and even after 10 litres of water we were still dehydrated! We will save you the grim details, but our time in Delhi has only allowed us one trip to the National museum. Unfortunately it is very hard to get better in India once you are ill due to the smell of open sewers and the fear of eating the food. The majority of the food here is unhygienic so the only way we can get better is to jump in a tuk tuk everyday and head to the main shopping area, Connaught place were we have to buy a meal at a trusted source e.g. TGI Fridays. We also had to change hotels to aid our recovery as the previous hotel was down a dingy alleyway with open sewers and a urinal at the end of the street. When it rained you had to wade through the open sewerage or try and hail a tuk tuk to take you over it! Plenty of the locals have warned us about the food and we have talked to some nice people including a group of students in the Taj Mahal of which one of them casually told us that the water didn't agree with him in Agra as it had given him Typhoid! So he drinks his regional bottled water instead. Even water here isn't as safe as it may appear. Some brands of water have 100 times as many the level of pesticides as they do at home!

Due to all this we have booked a flight to Kathmandu (we hope it's cleaner there) on Thursday and we must say we cannot wait! That means we have got 5 weeks in Nepal before we fly home from Delhi (again-oh no!) on the 2nd November. This will complete our circle of Asia adventure. Heading off to the mountains now for some fresh air!

We've seen some awful things in India, considering this country wants to be the new industrial giant of the world it has people that are classed with no more rights than the dogs that roam the streets. The cow, the goats and the monkeys the wander the streets seem to be more recognised than the people of a lower class. This country has got a lot of work to do, but no one seems interested in doing it. The harassment by touts and beggars plus cab drivers are endless even when you explain you know the scam, they still persist.