A young Indian driver who spoke very little English was despatched to take us on a pre-booked whistle-stop tour of the city, visiting as many sights as we could in 5 hours, but sadly, due to delays in unloading the excessive luggage on our flight (no, not ours), our trip ended up being a shorter 3 hours.

The fun started when the driver took us to a 5 seater car and a small boot, despite 4 months of emails asking for a large vehicle to take large suitcases!!  That’s India for you.  No worries, with a typical head shake, the cases were wedged into a roof rack and off we went.

We wanted to give Graham and Diane a view of real India and that’s what we did.

We left the airport suburbs and drive Indian style, 5 cars and 3 scooters abreast on a 4 lane road, non existent lane control where everyone toots their horn as they pass a scooter or pushbike. We went through the poor areas of town where lower classes sleep on matting on pavements with plastic sheeting for protection, secured on railings to form a roof.  That will be their sleeping, cooking and living area, some are fed by co-operatives locally, some do daily work but they are happy.

First stop, Qutub Minar, a red sandstone  tower 72.5 metres high, making it the tallest brick built minaret in the world, started in 1192 and completed in 1368, surrounded by royal tombs and Mosque.

David queued to purchase entry tickets, £5 each and immediately the cashier started bowing to him. Every time David said anything, the man put his hands together in prayer form and bowed his head.

We only had about 20 minutes to quickly admire the Tower and remains, we should have spent a few hours there but were on a tight schedule, but those few minutes there opened our eyes to the fact that we were White Westerners that stuck out a mile!!  Diane and I spent our time being stared at, videoed, photographed and being smiled at, everyone saying hello,  and several asking for Selfies with us, which we agreed to but moved on quickly before the next family or group asked for one!

We then drove around the city, viewing the affluent Embassy area, where every country in the World has an Embassy in a huge plush mansion with massive manicured gardens; the Government offices and Parliament, which were preparing for an upcoming Voting day and finally India Gate and its gardens before heading back to the airport for our final leg of the flight.