Up early and took photos along the back roads. Breakfast at Sunset cafe with lots of ginger tea. Give a few familiar beggars some rupees before we left. Then took a taxi to Ajmer to catch the Shabati express to Delhi. Past mountains through flat desert.
Shared our taxi with a Frenchman who talked rapidly in French about mad Indian drivers and was worried that India had a nuclear bomb.
We overtook a lorry on a hairpin bend as a bus came towards us up the hill.
The Shabati express to Delhi was just food food food…DIY tea and snacks then the waiter whisks away the tray! Then the same again with delicious tomato soup with a cinnamon flavour then a full meal of rice, paneer and dal followed by ice cream…I was so full!
During the journey I read The Alchemist.
The train was late into Delhi and we took a taxi to YMCA. Back in room 364! Very hot!
The next day was Good Friday and also a government holiday so all the travel agents were shut…if fact everything was shut! We end up going to a tourist centre and talk about lots of options to get us up to McCloud Ganj!
The guy tries to book bus tickets but nothing was available till 25th then suddenly asks his boss to ring and gets us on a bus on the 22nd for 650 rupees…I really wasn’t sure if we’d been ripped off?
Then get an a/c car with a white turbaned Sikh to Humayun's Tomb. I liked it more than the Taj.
Then on to the national Museum, with amazing stone carvings, ancient jewellery from Indus, old textiles and a wonderful gallery of miniatures …monkeys in banana trees.
Amazing skies as we drive back to the YMCA. Tandoori chicken and rice. Pack our spare bag full with tablecloths and finish off the evening with beers at Nirulas …just like England!
On our last day in Delhi we packed up and caught a riskshaw to the Red Fort It’s a massive open space.
The outside walls are more impressive than what’s inside! Very crowded – some bits like the baths are shut off but looked interesting inside with inlaid marble.
Then another rickshaw ride through the seething masses up Chandi Chowk… bikes, rickshaws, people everywhere. Everything is completely rundown. Again just as you imagine but more so!
Quite a long way to get up to Khari Baoli spice market which was INCREDIBLE!! Masses of little stalls with spices laid out on trays or small sacks, but at the back huge sacks of spices.
Go down one dark alleyway when men were continually carrying sacks out on their backs. Difficult to breathe…everyone coughing because of the spice dust in the air! Also soap stalls and pickle stands.
On the street men sitting around…presumably to carry sacks when needed. A completely chaotic atmosphere. Buy some saffron. The pavements were completely knackered!
Get a rickshaw to Jantar Mantar… this ride was probably the most chaotic so far… weaving in and out of the traffic! The air was pretty polluted. Jantar Mantar was very interesting…it looks almost modern but it was TOO HOT …40C at least and we gave up and went back to the YMCA to cool off and prepare for our overnight journey to Dharamsala.
