Another early start. We needed
to get to the Foreign Tourist office to book our train tickets by 8:00am. We
delayed breakfast in the hope that we wouldn’t be too long and we could come
back and have it once we had our trains booked.
We arrived just after 8:00am
and saw there was no queue outside the office, which gave us a little skip in
our step. That quickly faded when we opened the door to the office and saw a multitude
of people sitting on chairs all with pieces of paper in their hands. It looked
like there was some form of queue running round the room but it was unclear
where it began. After standing around like wallies for a couple of minutes the
queue started to move – one by one people shifted one seat to the right. We
found the end of the queue, filled in our details on the paper forms and waited
for our turn at the desk.
It took ages. And when I say
“ages” I mean over an hour. In that time we saw all manner of people joining
the seemingly endless queue, and they all did exactly what we did – stand in
the middle of the room trying to work out just what was going on. We made it to
the counter and managed to book all our tickets with minimal fuss. We both
wished that we had gone straight there instead of wasting our time with that
idiot in the hotel. But it was done and dusted so we pegged it back to the
hotel to have our breakfast, and just in time too!
 |
| Enjoying the breakfast, James? |
So then we could enjoy Delhi
now that everything was booked. We would need some more money after paying for
the trains with cash so the plan was to find a Standard Chartered bank near
Connaught Place and find the local market. We did exactly that, but it was more
of a market for the locals, selling clothes and loo brushes, so we marched on.
We were heading towards the India Gate, just down the road. It was actually
about 2 or 3 km down the road, but we had time on our hands and we fancied the
walk.
Soon enough we had arrived at
the India Gate and it was pretty impressive. I haven’t got any stats on it but
it is big and tall and surrounded by foreign and local tourists alike. As soon
as we arrived we were approached by a number of people asking for their photo
taking or selling us something. With our spidey-senses on red alert we politely
refused where possible, especially the gang of teenage school kids claiming
that it was the custom for me to give them my camera to take a picture of me
with them. Hmmmmm, I don’t think so chaps.
 |
| India Gate |
Once we had got our fill of the
India Gate we wandered down the main road to Humayun’s Tomb. Again, I had
already been here but I enjoyed it so much the first time that I felt James
should experience it too so that he didn’t get the idea that Delhi is just all
about the madness and chaos in/on/around the roads and main buildings. Inside
it is beautifully quiet and serene…except for the huge gaggles of schoolkids we
encountered that were just leaving as we arrived. The tomb is a pre-cursor if
you like for the Taj Mahal and in itself it is a fantastic place to visit. All the
traffic and noise is almost instantly removed from the atmosphere and you can
hear the birds chirping and hushed voices as people wander round. Just what we
needed after the mad dash round Delhi from Day 1.
 |
| The beautiful Humayun's Tomb |
It was getting late in the day
by then and we tried to find our way to the metro to get to somewhere else (as
yet undecided) in the city but we got to a point where we ran out of pavement.
Feeling the heat, lack of sleep and the energetic walks we decided to call it a
day and grabbed a tuk-tuk all the way back to the hotel, which took ages but
was ridiculously cheap so we were happy. It seemed that there were no good
(clean!) places to eat by our hotel so we ate on the rooftop of our hotel. It
was a cracking curry too, to the point where I ate far too much and felt far
too bloated for the rest of the night. But then again, we were just packing our
things and trying to book up our last hotel, in Mumbai, which proved very
troublesome indeed!
No comments:
Post a Comment