Welcome to India and the Chaos of New Delhi. When I go to India all I had heard of was how cheap it was and what great deals you could get for your money. So I went with a cheap hostel in the backpacker area of New Delhi. That was a horrible mistake and lessons were learned very quickly my first few days in India. That hostel was the first time in my entire trip that I was glad I had brought my travel sheets! Make sure you pay extra for a nice hotel/hostel. Try Booking.com instead of the main hostel sites. The hostel sites are all full of fake reviews while in India.
But what about the city? Its a mad house to say the least and you need to be on your guard at all times. But it really has a lot to offer if you can navigate through the mess or pay a little more to get around. Any rickshaw driver or tuktuk driver will be more than willing to tour you around to the major sites all day. But make sure you haggle as much as possible and make perfectly clear what services you expect. I took a rickshaw and that was a horrible mistake. Everything worked out ok but I felt horrible for this guy manually having to pedal me around all day and not being able to pay him as much as he wanted. He “wanted” $100 USD, but thats not what we arranged. Id take a TukTuk next time. One good day with one of these tuktuk guys and you will have seen every major tourist site in town.
If you are planing on getting any train tickets while here make sure you go inside the train station and go to the second floor to the official tourist office. Across the street from the station are hundreds of places with fake “official” “government approved” places that will try to sell you tickets. Ignore absolutely everyone that tries to get you to go anywhere else. The real tourist office is always open, hasn’t moved, and is in the train station just follow the signs.
