We’ve been in Delhi a couple of days. Yesterday we went to visit a famous mosque, the name of which now escapes me. Into an onslaught of monsoon rain, we left our guesthouse and meandered through a higgledy-piggledy bazaar, swarming with life.

Traffic is a maelstrom of zigzagging three-wheeled taxis, pained expressions on the faces of hollow-cheeked rickshaw drivers, reckless young men on motorbikes, family-filled mopeds, cars incessantly honking and cow after languid cow wandering to God-knows-where. Vast, drooping reams of fraying cables run along pillars beside the road, above steaming pots and pans, mountains of fruits,  jam-packed outdoor displays of shining sweets, toys, watches, shoes, scarves, dresses, everything.

You cannot walk ten yards without meeting the outstretched hand of a rag-clad mother with her rag-clad baby; a lovable young face gazing up at you with desolate eyes; the knitted brows of an old man long-deprived of his teeth, his fingers, his arm or his leg. You cannot walk another without the mosquito-like attention of a determined tout, insisting this guesthouse, that taxi or the scarves at his "brother’s shop" are the best value in town.

We had to wear robes covering our limbs at the mosque. It’s rather eccentric, the Indian sense of decency. I had a whole street looking on, gaping, smiling and guffawing as they watched my frustrated attempts to replace a sticky and "revealing" vest with a t-shirt. I keep being rebuked by Amy, my girlfriend and fellow traveller, for idly pecking her on the cheek, holding her hand and committing countless other heinous sins of public indecency.

And yet, many Indians – rather admirably, I’ve come to think - happily sleep by doorways, on parked rickshaws, on shop counters and on station platforms. Cutlery is widely spurned, and curry eaten with the hands. Some restaurant and hotel owners will overcharge you 15 rupees for a meal or 100 rupees for a room "by mistake".

Some taxi drivers treble their prices for tourists and insist it’s a fixed price; some switch off their meters and tell you that they are broken. Most workers at holy sites request tips for the onerous task of looking after the footwear you’ve been told to take off. Orderly queueing is a concept only understood on the rare occasions when the alternative is a taste of the policeman’s baton.

Many Indian men spit and project their bile, moreover, with a casual ferocity that puts the most brazen of British louts to shame. Many unveil their members to piss on the sides of streets and railways. Young men often walk along holding hands. But hug your partner of the opposite sex in public, and the line has been seriously crossed. The logic underpinning these cultural norms is still beyond me. One has to wonder if our own habits strike outsiders as equally peculiar.