Air India Flight 112 took my friend Cameron and me from London Heathrow to Delhi.

We’re about to discover how much India can test you before you’re properly let in.

Our first surprise in India was seeing that Indira Gandhi International Airport is carpeted—in brown.

After that, the surprises became… involved.

Landing in Delhi on Republic Day

When we land, we have to fill in a redundant but mandatory slip with information that’s readily available on other documents, such as flight number, visa number, passport number, address in India, etc.

Customs and immigration is a drawn-out affair, and our first taste of India’s infuriating bureaucracy.

We reach the front of the slowest queue in the entire airport, only to be told we’ve been waiting in the incorrect one.

As we walk off to find the correct queue, we’re called back.

But we should have carried on walking.

Everyone in the queue is being exhaustingly interrogated by a zealous customs officer who we suspect is very new to his job.

Cameron gets through after being asked, “What is your dad’s name?”

He shoots me a wry, knowing look as neither of us has relationships with our dads and are both heartsick of paternal lineage being taken as higher proof of identity than the maternal despite both our dads buggering off, leaving our mums to raise us alone.

Two absent fathers might be a coincidence too far for the customs officer.

Nor is he cheered up when Cameron shows him a picture of a smiling white guy in a bejewelled turban as evidence that we are in India to attend a wedding (the truth, I swear).

The photo is genuinely of the groom, but there’s no way to prove it.

Running the customs gauntlet

Access, or should that be passage, to India takes me longer to acquire than Cameron.

After declaring my name, I am told that I have written my dad’s name in the “my name” field on my visa, and vice versa. I haven’t.

After an uncomfortable silence, I’m asked, “who’s Thomas Warwick?”

I’ve changed my name via deed poll to distance myself from my father, something that seems to puzzle the customs officer.

I know his name, but not any of the other details I’m asked to provide about him (such as his date of birth, and occupation).

Then the biometric scanner fails to recognise me as the same person as in my passport photo.

I have a beard in this photo that I have shaved off to smarten up for the wedding.

Added up, the customs officer is becoming alert and suspicious, and we’re running out of mutually satisfactory options to prove who I am.

I’m on very shaky ground.

His neighbour managing the adjacent queue keeps casting sideways glances at him, as if pleading with him to just let me through.

After what feels like a very long time, I’m asked to provide finger and thumbprints, and finally allowed across the border.

As if to confirm it’s his first day on the job, he stamps my tourist visa onto one of my passport’s information pages.

There are only our bags left from our flight by the time we reach the luggage carousel, which has been turned off because we landed so long ago.

This episode at customs is our first hint that India will not be rushed, no matter how tired you are or how tight your schedule is.

SIM cards, ATMs, and the last calm moments

In the arrivals foyer, we put prepaid Lebara SIMs into our phones.

Cameron’s works straight away, but mine doesn’t.

I’ve already spent two full nights without sleep (one very uncomfortably so on our overnight flight) and have to spend my first moments in India googling arcane solutions to SIM card issues on Reddit while Cameron hotspots me.

I could connect to the airport WiFi, but getting access to the code involves more queuing, questions, and kiosks, and it’s barely 5am.

Eventually it works, and I’m glad for the remainder of our trip to have invested this early effort.

Re-entry into India’s airports is not usually allowed, and they are the last outpost of normalcy and simple transactions.

So it’s wise to ensure that the essential bases—money, communications, and documents—are in order before stepping outside.

Like physical SIM cards that work in India, rupees are also surprisingly difficult to acquire in the UK.

Against all the advice of every travel blog and insurer ever, we have all our cash (about £3000) on a single Revolut card that we haven’t tested.

A few beads of sweat appear while we wait to see if the card is accepted by the ATMs and are very relieved when it is.

It dispenses only 500‑rupee notes (about £5 in 2025), which later we learn is a barely spendable denomination often refused by vendors for the same reasons bus drivers often refuse to accept notes—It rids them of all their change and is difficult to pass on.

If you can accept that India’s ATMs dispense denominations that often force you to put all your items back after payment is refused, you are close to understanding the frustrating yet oddly endearing idiosyncrasies of modern travel in India.

Even small tasks can feel like a test of patience, and we’re already running low on reserves.

Drawing up a battle plan

While I am trying to get my SIM card to work, Cameron comes up with a plan to maximise our few hours in Delhi.

It’s currently 5am, and we have to catch a train to Agra that leaves in 3 hours.

In the interim, he decides we should head to see the Gurdwara Bangla Sahib, a house of Sikh worship not far from Connaught Place.

After that, we’ll head to India Gate, a war memorial built by the colonial architect Edwin Lutyens, and try to catch the sunrise over it.

Republic Day and Shah Jahan's Urs

It’s while we are making these plans that we realise two huge national holidays are being celebrated today.

India is hardly known for its lack of crowds and hassle-free navigation, and these two holidays are going to compound our fatigue and make all our plans today very gruelling indeed.

For many good reasons, we refused to travel across India by plane, but by tomorrow, we need to be in Ramnagar to be on site for the wedding we are here to attend.

To get there, we’ve booked an overnight train that leaves tonight from Agra, on which we will enjoy our first night’s sleep after three long days of travel.

While in Agra, we plan to visit the Taj Mahal.

One of the national holidays is the annual commemoration of the emperor who built it, Shah Jahan.

On this particular Shah Jahan commemoration, entry is free for everyone in India after 2pm, and rare access to the crypt beneath the building is granted for all.

Everyone who isn’t going to the Taj is descending instead upon Delhi, to join in the Republic Day festivities.

This vast gathering celebrates India adopting its own constitution on 26 January 1950, marking the end of a transitional period after gaining independence from the British on 15 August 1947.

It boasts India’s largest military parade, as well as numerous awards and honours, is attended by the President of India, and is broadcast nationwide from the capital.

In short, it’s a poor day to land in India without a hotel booking, with plans and connections in both Delhi and Agra.

Ubering around Republic Day Delhi

In the taxi to the Gurdwara, cool pre-dawn air flows in through the open window, tasting of diesel and heavy traffic.

Traffic is bonkers, even at 5am.

Numerous blockades have been erected to control the Republic Day traffic. Everyone simply careens up to them like pool balls on an uneven table.

The heaviest vehicle has the de facto right of way and barges lesser road users to the side.

For all its dangers (there are numerous road-related deaths every day in Delhi, and hundreds nationwide), this “might is right” system has been refined to a remarkable level of efficiency, and we don’t hit any major delays.

Then again, New Delhi’s highways are very wide and spacious, and it is very early in the morning.

This lively megacity is clearly gearing up for a busy day.

Chai wallahs and shotgun wallahs (security guards) loaf by the kerbside.

When we reach it, the Gurdwara is very prettily lit up, and worshippers are performing their early-morning devotions.

We decide not to stash our bags and shoes in order to see the reflection pool.

Three hours in and Cameron becomes Raj

If logistics and sustenance across the world were under the control of only a handful of megacorporations, there would be scarcely any point in travelling abroad.

And yet, a female friend who has visited India alone three times recommended Uber as the best way to get around Delhi as it’s standardised, and any traveller is consequently less likely to be ripped off or come to harm.

So it is that Cameron and I are Ubering around Delhi at this early hour of the morning, a decision that has already had one funny consequence.

Our first Uber from the airport failed to show up.

Cameron blamed this rebuff on his extremely English double-barrelled surname, “Carpenter-Warren.”

Double-barrelled names have their own price bracket in the tattoo parlours of British seaside towns like Skegness and Brighton, but their resident artists have almost certainly never tattooed the name “Carpenter-Warren” onto anyone’s arm or neck.

Only slightly more likely is this name inciting race discrimination among Indian Uber drivers, but miffed at being ignored and hoping to increase our success rate, Cameron changes his Uber profile picture to a Sikh in a turban (one of his colleagues, I believe).

The punchline to his own joke is changing his username to Raj.

When I point out that this might lead to worse consequences than not being picked up, he reverts to his true details.

A very long two weeks ahead

We’ve been in India for only a few hours, but it feels as if the country has already taken our measure.

We take an Uber to India Gate but are not allowed near it due to the Republic Day preparations. (We managed to see it later in the trip, despite Delhi’s appalling smog.)

Instead, we approach it on foot and actually manage to blag our way past the guards who, with a wave of their heads, let us past their blockade.

After hiking a few hundred meters with all our luggage, it becomes obvious that the sheer number of temporary structures, visitors, and other holiday paraphernalia is going to block our way anyway.

So back past the chai wallahs, shotgun wallahs, and baton wallahs we go.

Veterans in splendid military uniform are climbing down from buses in the middle of the road. It’s touching to think of the effort these elderly gentlemen are putting into today’s celebrations, in their crisp uniforms dripping with medals.

The parade later today must be a truly awe-inspiring sight.

But like India Gate and the rest of Delhi, we won’t get to see it.

After a very abortive start to our trip, it’s time to catch our train to Agra from New Delhi Railway Station.

We’ve survived Delhi’s opening salvo. Just.

If this is hour three, what will day fourteen be like?