Two types - AF (one copy)

AB (two copies, one for re-embarkation)

Usual questions on name, date of birth, purpose of visit etc. Plus Customs Clearance part - duty concessions - up to 0.95 litres of alcohol. Our bottles are 1 litre. We will have to fill in a Tourist Baggage Re-export form for our camera gear (but hopefully not for my personal stereo). In addition, since we all have more than US$1000, we need to declare our travellers cheques to customs on a currency declaration form.

The final hassle is the last note: "All foreigners except those specially exempted are required to settle their hotel bills directly in foreign exchange."

All this hassle will hit us just as we are at our most tired and vulnerable. Great.

4.33am Moscow Time (6.33 Delhi?). Sunrise over India, from 10,000m in a big Russian jet. I never thought I'd see this.

5.29 Moscow time. We've landed, after an aerial tour of New Delhi. The air temperature is 27°C. Help!

12.15pm local time. The airport wasn't too much of an ordeal - we had to find a Disembarkation Card with two parts (lying on a table) and present this to a Sikh on the immigration desk. The building was pretty empty at that time of the morning - in fact practically deserted.

On our way to pick up our luggage we saw people having their luggage emptied at the "Something to Declare" bit. So after filling out a Currency Exchange Form (which took quite a while) we sloped off in an ignorant sort of fashion towards the "Nothing to Declare" exit. Our luck was in - the Customs man even helpfully pointed out the bank, where we changed $90 in my case, £50 in the others'.

The humidity hit us when we walked off the plane (in fact the air coming in the roof vents had formed clouds on hitting the colder cabin air) but the heat didn't strike us till we walked outside. It was very warm, something that might be interesting for 5 minutes, but all day?

At this point I must mention the smell. I don't know whether it's characteristic of the whole of India, or just this part, but it's a bit like having your head stuck into a pot of hospital curried offcuts and not being able to take it out.

Mary chatted up a new Finnish arrival, Joumi, who guided us to the area north of Connaught Place. We overpaid the auto-rickshaw driver something rotten (Rs 6) and were taken on a hair-raising journey, which reminded me of a particularly imaginative fairground ride.

So we've had the works - kids offering to polish our shoes, men wanting to sell us accommodation, and crowds gathering round when we stop and look helpless. We are now in the "Crystal Hotel", and by the hammering and banging outside the door it's still being built. Still, Rs90 for a double room, and it has a fan and an attached (Indian-style) bathroom. I am now going to crash out.

The "Hotel Crystal" is apparently at 8126 Arakashan Road. I think we're paying Rs90 because of the fan.

After a long sleep till 8pm, and a shower, we wandered out to see the streets of Delhi. We left the hotel to find incredible scenes of business and bustle, even after 9m. Do they ever sleep? In one block we saw people building, having their hair cut, selling sandals, bags, food. We saw about three sawmills, two doctors' surgeries, a chemist, a plastic works and a foundry. We saw people cooking chapattis on little wood stoves on the pavement, others peeling limes or bananas, selling vegetables, bus tickets, clothes and food. There were a couple of tailors (which I might visit) and a little shop selling soft drinks and bottled water. Trishaw riders were asleep on their seats and, more pitifully, others were sleeping on the pavement. I nearly trod on a little heap of brown rags that turned out to be a person, hunched-up and staring at the traffic. No real hopelessness apparent, though, such as George says he saw in Bombay. On the contrary, everyone seems lively and industrious. I've never seen so many little businesses so close together. Maybe that's what Maggie wants Britain to be like.

We walked slowly through all this, feeling (in my case anyway) that it was dreamlike, a film set. Some of the little food stands looked very tempting - one had a wide, shallow bowl with frying buns, and another with a creamy sauce over rolled-up pastry things. Another couple had square, metal boxes filled with water, with little, white, round things bobbing around (milk balls). Another was making omelettes, another boiling eggs. One woman had a huge, shallow pan with milk (I think) simmering gently. There was a bloke selling pineapples, or pineapple juice. I feel hungry just thinking about it.

And then there were the animals. Sacred cows - white with humps, or brown without. Some were wandering around, others lying down; one was feeding, tied by a rope to its feeding box. Another (white with swept-back horns) was harnessed to a cart. There were donkeys, and ponies, one little pony pulling a cart with about eight or ten people on it, at the trot.

There are dogs of course - one's howling outside our window now. Some were thin and wiry, scurrying through the streets. Two puppies were fat and well-fed; a larger black cur was lying asleep in the dead pose.

Outside the cinema (with a queue to see an "adults-only" film) we saw geckos running up the walls. No rats Or cats. We bought a litre of water each, and I bought a couple of disposable razors. We're now back in the hotel, appreciating the air-conditioning and writing diaries. We've ordered breakfast - tea and toast - for 9 tomorrow morning. (We chose from a menu which had such delights as "Hambur Gers" and "Corn Flaks".)

We've finished the "Highland Spring" mineral water (It was lovely). We've also almost finished the water we bought. We've been putting sterilising tablets in the bottled water, just to be on the safe side. We have 192 tablets between Cathy and myself, so at 3 litres each per day, that's 32 days' supply. Cathy also has 100ml of Milton 2 sterilising fluid, enough for another 184 litres. Finally, I have potassium permanganate, although I don't know how much that'll treat.

We've resolved to drink no untreated water, and we've made up a Milton's solution for doing our teeth.