Travelling Dot Com......Dot Org

It was 7:00am and the alarm was bleeping furiously at me from the floor of our room. I had put it there to make sure that we would get up and out of bed which would hopefully not lead to a repeat of the Terracotta Warriors fiasco. We crawled out of bed, got ourselves ready and headed down for breakfast. We ate as much as we could/dared so that we didn’t have to take lots of provisions with us on the road as we would be spending the entire day travelling.

After we had checked out of the hotel we jumped in nearby taxi (yes, it was the small Suzuki that we had become accustomed to) which took us to the micro-bus stand a couple of miles down the road. We were prepared for the madness of this place but thankfully it wasn’t as bad as Kathmandu and we managed to get seats on a fairly decent mini-bus. It filled up quickly and we even had a few women on board, which made it much less like a prison van, according to James. We set off and crossed our fingers that there wouldn’t be any delays so that we could get to the airport in plenty of time.

Fingers crossed we don't break down!

The journey wasn’t all that bad in the end, apart from having some bloke sat next to me (on a bucket) for most of the journey and there being loud bhangra music played for the majority of the trip. We made a stop-off for lunch and a couple of stops at fruit stalls where the drivers bought a variety of items which later ended up in the hands of one of the traffic/border police. We did see another Westerner at one of the stops, which was a change, as it seemed like these mini-buses were mostly used by the locals who didn’t want to get the local buses…and I don’t blame them!

An old Indian man looks at me and James

James’s digestive system managed to complete the journey without any mishaps, which was perhaps the best thing about the trip, and we climbed out of the mini-bus back in Kalanki Bus Park, Kathmandu. Instantly there were taxi drivers after our custom and, with a bit of haggling, we got a fairly decent price to the airport in (yes, you guessed it!) another Suzuki taxi. Somehow we made it there in one piece and looked for our flight on the Departures Board. 3 hours to wait, no problem.

We went through all the usual procedures, played some more cards and then got ready to board at half 6 in the evening. It had already been a long day of travelling and we were still only at the beginning of stage 4 of 5! Our Spicejet plane was called Dill (as all of them are named/labelled with a different spice, although I’m not sure that Dill is a spice, more of a herb isn’t it?) and we had been given the fire escape seats…bonus! Acres of legroom, even though the flight was only for an hour and 10 minutes. It was enjoyable and (because it was) uneventful and we landed in Delhi without any delays.

We were to be picked up from the airport by our hotel, after many an email between me and “Ravi”, and thankfully our man was still there holding the piece of paper with my name on it when we arrived. After apologising for being later than expected we jumped in his car and careered through the darkened streets of Delhi towards the hotel.

It looked pretty swanky and our room, although it was a double and not a twin as requested, was great. We made ourselves at home before heading onto the roof to order a late-night meal. They only had Indian food on so no snacks or sandwiches which was just what we needed – I didn’t want to eat a full meal at gone 10:00pm. And James certainly wasn’t wanting any spicy food, so we just ordered two big Kingfishers and supped them on the roof on our first night in India.