Goodbye India

Amritsar, India, 2 September 2008
Delhi, India, 3-4 September 2008

In Amritsar we were very much back to the hustle and bustle of big city India. Traffic was horrendous. Pavements were either non-existent or completely cluttered with tuk-tuks, motos, rubbish, food stalls, generators and so on. We checked into a nice hotel and locked ourselves away from the chaos outside. All we needed to do in Amritsar was visit the Golden Temple, attend the changing of the guards at the Pakistan border and catch the train back to Delhi. That wasn't very much but unfortunately we had 2 full days in which to do it. We decided to combine the two things (not counting the train journey) into one excursion. As the changing of the guards takes place at 6:20pm we would not leave our hotel until 4:30pm. As we lay in bed watching TV, Dave took the notion to double check the details of our train journey. Panic stations struck when we noticed we had booked the train a day earlier than expected ie 1 hours time. Ahhhhhhhh. We tried to cancel it online but it was too late. We tried to re-book but there was a waiting list. Nothing for it, we packed up our belongings and high-tailed it to the train station. We couldn't believe we had spent the whole day in Amritsar doing nothing when we could have easily visited the Golden Temple. But the hits didn't stop there. Having paid the extra (£35) to travel 1st Class Air-Con we had images of unsurpassed luxury but what we got was one very small step up from AC Chair Class. Now we had another dilemma on our hands... we had originally intended to go directly from the train to the airport and wait for check-in to open at 3:30am for our flight to Nepal. But now we were a day early for our flight. Do we still go to the airport ad hope that they will let us on the flight or do we check into our hotel and resign ourselves to spending one more day in "delightful" Delhi? After one flick of the coin, then a best out of three... we checked back into a hotel in Delhi. It wasn't far from the train station so we decided to walk. To say Claire was curt with the touts and tuk-tuk drivers would be putting it very mildly indeed. She certainly didn't mince her words.

It was a wise decision to stay as we got a good nights sleep, updated the blog on the internet, enjoyed some surprisingly good food on the rooftop cafe abd were very happy to catch the taxi ride to Indira Ghandi International airport.

Closing Statement India:
India is what India is and it was a privilege to be able to come here and witness it for ourselves but we are reminded too much of the fable of the Emperors New Clothes. Everybody who visits India knows it is a dump but they all seem reluctant to say it out loud. There are simply too many better places that one can visit in this world to waste your time trawling through India. Harsh but we feel we are in a position to pass judgement.

Chai is the drink of choice in India





Would you eat here???