Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Delhi - 26/5 - 27/5

We spent pretty much all of the 26th in bed trying to catch up on sleep and beat jet lag, which seemed to work out okay. Our first meal in India was some room service. It turned out to be pretty nice - we had a vegetable curry, yellow dahl and mushroom mattar - a good way to kick off eating in India. We went to see a travel agent after that as we decided to get some travel within India organised for us rather than doing it ourselves like in Vietnam. The next day we had a driver to see some sights in Delhi, the first stop was the Jaima Masjid Mosque, the largest in India, where the locals gleefully took one look at us and took us for a ride. Not reading the guidebook before we went in meant that we paid to get into a free monument and that we also ended up paying for a ‘guide’ at the end as well as paying a guy too much for looking after our shoes. It was worth visiting though and the 'guide' shared some interesting historical information about the mosque. So, lesson one in India: trust no one! We headed over to the Red Fort after that but didn’t worry about going in as we’d been informed that Agra Fort is much more impressive so we’ll go there instead. After that the heat was beginning to take its toll on both of us so we went to the (air-conditioned) National Museum of India. It was well worth the visit as there are displays on the ancient cultures of India, coins, maritime exploits, some info on the East India Trading Company - loads of stuff. After that our driver took us to a restaurant for lunch - very yummy. In the evening we finalised our tour booking. At the travel agent we met Claudia, a lady from Brazil, who was telling us she’d just spent a month in Kashmir. She went for three days and ended up staying 30. She went on to say that she was returning to Brazil to wrap up her affairs over the next four months and was then going to live in Kashmir. It was back to the hotel and off to bed afterwards as we had an early start the next morning.

2 comments:

Kelly said...

I thought you have seen Slumdog!!!

Kelly said...

Rob says At least you got your shoes back xo