Out with a bang, in with the gang!

Tuesday, November 06, 2001
Delhi, India
Namste,

shee-hoowzzeers. this is 1 happening place.

had a wicked last night in london. went with some friends to primrose hill near
camden to watch the fireworks display. add to that equation lots of people and
several bottles of the finest red wine 3 pounds will buy and we had a great
time. ended off with dinner in golders green at a pizza place, my last decent
dinner!

sunday morning got to Heathrow to find utter mayhem. queues and queues of
people. my mate justin had given me a lift to the airport so he ran off to find
where i should be Q'ing. in the meantime i just got into the 1st Q i could
find. 20 minutes later i found it was the wrong Q! so now i had to go and stand
in the right Q, but had lost justin! so then i hear my name called over the
speaker system "Gil Blumberg, please come to information", but ofcourse if i
did i would have lost my place in the Q. anyways, finally checked in at 11:15,
and legged it across heathrow to make the flight at 11:30. and after all that,
the flight left an hour late b'cos the truck that pulls or pushes the plane
broke down! the plane ride was fairly boring. i was going to get some sleep,
but being stuck next to the toilets at the back of plane...the battle was
already lost!

managed to meet up with my travel mate, Dave luckily enough in Delhi airport.
He had taken a different flight, which was also delayed so...ai ya yai...

we had a taxi driver from the hotel waiting for us, even had a plaque with my
name written on it, wicked. i've always wanted that. as the taxi drove in the
area where all these other "hotels" are, we saw cows all over the street. some
standing, some sleeping, others chatting about the weather, who knows what.

oh, the weather, it was 26 degrees at 4am this morning. arhggghh. made going to
sleep a really rough time. especially given that the fan in our "hotel" room
only operated when the light ws switched on. oh, and worth pointing out that
the light switch was outside the room. bizarre.

we woke up about 13:30 and went for a walk in the main bazaar area. we were
very quickly approached by a kid called Riki who said he was a student and
would show us the "Government office" where we would get the "real" prices for
train tickets. then his mate "Bablo" joined in and also took us there. "just
around the corner". half an hour later we get to this shanty tourist office. we
went inside and asked about prices, but they were overpriced. plus the guy
wanted photocopies of our passports. Why? B'cos they are a "real govt. office".
heh. at this point Bablo and Riki had walked off. so we leave this office and
Riki makes an apperarence out of no where. he says that Bablo is a dodgy geezer
and he will show us the "real office". he tried to take us on a goose chase
too, but we politely told him we are going back to the hotel.

so now it's 16:50 and we are going to have breakfast/lunch/dinner and a cold
drink on top of the hotel which boasts a lovely view of Delhi (well whatever
can be seen through the smog!). the area we area staying in is just amazing. a
flurry of rickshaws, shops, smells, people and cows all around. we are leaving
tomorrow morning to the Taj Mahal, then wednesday for Nepal!

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