Today is a day of leisure and getting to know the group. I’m never overly confident in these social situations. Small talk has never been my forte and I find meeting new people exhausting and often full of awkward silences. Today the whole group will all be together for the first time at lunch, let’s see how it goes.

I have to say, the food at the hotel is wonderful and lunch went well. The most positive thing to come out was that 9 out of the 12 people here are repeat customers of Natural Exposures. And I have to say Tanya, Dan’s wife, is an excellent host. We also met Dan, the professional photographer, in the group. I’ve not yet had a chance to speak to him, but hopefully his advice will be useful when we get to shooting the wildlife.

A new day and the morning is at leisure. The afternoon, though, was one to fill all your senses. Firstly we drove through New Delhi, built by the British Raja in the early 20th Century and then onto Old Delhi, to the second largest mosque, Jama Masjid, in India. A sense of history and sense of devotion.

After the mosque it was a sense of wonder and terror as we made our way through the streets of Old Delhi on a rickshaw. Unlike Nepal, where to this day I’m not sure which side of the road they drive on, here, they know which side they should be, but ignore all road protocol and rules. The sense of wonder is you wonder why there are so few accidents and a sense of terror as the oncoming traffic appears to be on your side of the road…but somehow it works! The mosque I’d been to before with my Mother about 11 or 12 years ago and it hadn’t changed at all. Filled with tourists, such as ourselves, and devotees in equal numbers. A place to reflect no matter what your beliefs.

Our next stop was the spice market in Old Delhi. The smells and the colours tickled your senses, well tickled your throat, anyway, as the strong smell and fine dust of the spices were inhaled and stuck in your throat. The coughing was universal, even the locals.

I do love these local markets, always colourful and full of characters that are loud and flamboyant. We then tackled the rickshaw ride back to the bus, even more scary as we took the main roads back. The big four way or five way junctions that were in theory controlled by traffic lights, were a place that you closed your eyes as the rickshaw driver pedalled like mad to weave in and out of the traffic that came at you in all directions…somehow we made it unscathed!

Tomorrow we fly to Leh, in Kashmir, to acclimatise for a couple of days before we drive up to the Snow Leopard Lodge.