We went back to Delhi for two days to catch up on some rest before moving onto Bangkok and new adventures.
Our train trip back to Delhi was not without incident
. We arrived to our much awaited "romantic" sleeper carriage. How nice to be just us travelling through the night. Wrong! Our carriage had 2 Indian men already setting themselves up. We went to find the stationmaster or anybody to help. The list outside of our carriage only had our names.We had paid for 4 beds. We wanted these men out of our bedroom. No luck. I was told by the stationmaster that our tickets should have had a "c" next to them and ours didn't. Oh the frustration! Truth was our Indian men were able to bribe their way into our carriage we think. To annoy them we left the lights on all night but our last train trip in India was true to form of all others.
It is with mixed feelings that we leave India, popular sentiment says you either love it or hate it.We can honestly say we fit neither category, there was much to like but find it hard to believe that one could love the touts, the pollution, the arrogance of many of the men, the endless paper work required for everything and not to mention the indiscriminate spitting everywhere
.
India tourism states visit `Incredible India' if this refers to incredibly frustrating then it is a spot on slogan.
The day before we were to leave we walked to the train station and located the booth that sells set price taxis to the airport. We just didn't want to have to haggle prices at 4.30am. Next morning, packs on, we headed out in the dark for the taxi booth. Taxis touted for our business and we ignored them. Not far from the station a taxi driver called to us
" Madam, Sir, the set price airport taxi booth doesn't open until 6.00am".
We paused. We hadn't checked the opening time assuming it was 24 hour.. He had us, and pressed his advantage,
"Madam, Sir I can take you in my taxi for same price as fixed price taxi"
We got in. The driver drove through the station carpark and guess what? Yes there was the set price taxi booth open for business.
Avan yelled "you are the millionth Indian to lie to me! That ticket booth IS open"
" Oh no Sir " he chuckled "We are a billion people and we all lie"
and THAT sums up India.
Leaving India
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
New Delhi, India
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