Delhi

Never had a desire to come to India ever, but my gf had business to attend so decided to tag along for the experience.

People are mostly friendly, eager to help when they can and despite the chaos, really proud of the city, their culture and spiritual connections, none of which I can relate to since I value modern, cleanliness and safety more than old dilapidated buildings.

Love a good curry, but even though I mostly ate at "expensive" places, I still ended up with diarrhoea. Thankfully it was at 3am in my hotel room because public bathrooms are impossible to use, I'm from Africa and never experienced bathrooms as bad as they are in India and I probably would have rather took a dump under a tree as the locals do, than having to share a dirty toilet that hasn't ever seen a cleaner.

Everything was very inconvenient for most of the trip and misinformation was rife.
On arrival our Indian connection that picked us up at the airport told us we cannot use Uber without Indian credit card. False, I installed it and it worked. Our first guest house, booked by our Indian connection, wifi didn't work and there was no 4G signal and the staff wasn't of help at all.

We decided not to stay there so we grabbed a few important things, locked the door and walked around to find signal and book a new hotel - but still couldn't so we eventually jumped on a rickshaw and ask the guy to take us to hotels. Eventually found a 5 star hotel and things were good. Got good sleep and went back next to fetch the remaining stuff using Uber.

Took the subway once with a guide and despite the chaos - it was surprisingly clean and modern, comparable to KL or Singapore. Defo not what I expected.

On the way back home to leave India, even just getting into the airport took an hour, narrowly making our flight, despite getting there over 2 hours early - airline recommended 90 minutes ahead of time. Turns out they don't let you into if you didn't have your flight iterinary printed / on your phone. My roaming data ran out just before we reached the airport and then the wifi on the airport didn't work so I couldn't get that information. After getting sent around by Airport Security for like 40 minutes in different directions because nobody knew what was going on (more misinformation).
They finally sent us to an office, hidden, outside the airport that helped us print our booking just to be able to make our way to the checkin counter to drop our luggage. And even then, they gave us wrong information, the lady sent us to Counter C and upon arrival, it was Counter D. 😂
Never in my life anywhere in the world did I need to have my tickets printed - usually at check in counters you just show passport and they retrieve all info. Crazy, but I guess they do it to prevent the whole extended family of 24 tagging along to see off their son on his flight to London or SF for a Tech job.

Would I come back? I wouldn't avoid going there, but I wouldn't be too enthusiastic about going back either.

Never had a desire to come to India ever, but my gf had business to attend so decided to tag along for the experience.

People are mostly friendly, eager to help when they can and despite the chaos, really proud of the city, their culture and spiritual connections, none of which I can relate to since I value modern, cleanliness and safety more than old smelly and dilapidated buildings.

Love a good curry, but even though I mostly ate at "expensive" places, I still ended up with diarrhoea. Thankfully it was at 3am in my hotel room because public bathrooms are impossible to use, I'm from Africa and never experienced bathrooms as bad as they are in India and I probably would have rather took a dump under a tree as the locals do, than having to share a dirty toilet that hasn't ever seen a cleaner.

Everything was very inconvenient for most of the trip and misinformation was rife.
On arrival our Indian connection that picked us up at the airport told us we cannot use Uber without Indian credit card. False, I installed it and it worked. Our first guest house, booked by our Indian connection, wifi didn't work and there was no 4G signal and the staff wasn't of help at all.

We decided not to stay there so we grabbed a few important things, locked the door and walked around to find signal and book a new hotel - but still couldn't so we eventually jumped on a rickshaw and ask the guy to take us to hotels. Eventually found a 5 star hotel and things were good. Got good sleep and went back next to fetch the remaining stuff using Uber.

Took the subway once with a guide and despite the chaos - it was surprisingly clean and modern, comparable to KL or Singapore. Defo not what I expected.

On the way back home to leave India, even just getting into the airport took an hour, narrowly making our flight, despite getting there over 2 hours early - airline recommended 90 minutes ahead of time. Turns out they don't let you into if you didn't have your flight iterinary printed / on your phone. My roaming data ran out just before we reached the airport and then the wifi on the airport didn't work so I couldn't get that information. After getting sent around by Airport Security for like 40 minutes in different directions because nobody knew what was going on (more misinformation).
They finally sent us to an office, hidden, outside the airport that helped us print our booking just to be able to make our way to the checkin counter to drop our luggage. And even then, they gave us wrong information, the lady sent us to Counter C and upon arrival, it was Counter D. 😂
Never in my life anywhere in the world did I need to have my tickets printed - usually at check in counters you just show passport and they retrieve all info. Crazy, but I guess they do it to prevent the whole extended family of 24 tagging along to see off their son on his flight to London or SF for a Tech job.

Would I come back? I wouldn't avoid going there, but I wouldn't be too enthusiastic about going back either.

extremely dirty, very noisy, non walkable, the city is also ugly (except mausoleum and forts, of course). Hard to recommend, unless you’re very found of spirituality. Forget to mention but the food is of course amazing!

Very culturally enriching. The architecture, the history, the food, the customs of the people. It's also very cheap. Nightlife is good but it ends up very early. Also, public transportation is chaotic.