Travel - lots of it

---

---

Inda 2007
andy runcimanJust a quick update here, had written a bigger one yesterday but the power cut on me!

We left Mcleod by bus on Sunday evening - the journey was unremarkable except for the very loud driver and conductor who chatted all night!

Arriving in Delhi in the early morning we grabbed a tuk-tuk to rekha's (the GAP rep in Delhi) who is amazingly nice and cooked us a wonderful breakfast of bhuji (scrambled eggs indian style - i.e. with spices), chai and toast with real english-style strawberry jam! I couldn't get enough... We then tried to book some train tickets for getting about the south at the local ticket office but the guy at the counter was chatting some shit to me about the train not existing so I walked out and we went to the Paharganj district to get a cheap room. Paharganj is cool - traveler's hang out with cheap rooms (ours was good too, fairly clean and there was a bakery and pool able downstairs) and lots of cool alleys with funky stalls, shops and cheap eats. Shame the air quality in Delhi is so bad, even had to use an inhaler for the 1st time. We then went to the massive New Delhi train station to sort out the tickets; as I thought the guy was talking shit, the trains did exist and we were done in 30mins thanks to the (air-con) booking room just for tourists to avoid the huge press downstairs!

We left early the next morning (me with 2 cinnamon swirls from the bakery for breakfast, Bhaarat passing feeling ill, but then he never likes early mornings!) for our 6.45 train to Bangalore. The journey was interesting... 37 hours with no air-con on a thin leather bunk = very hot and sweaty, it was even hot to touch the edges of the train during the afternoon as it had all heated up. The scenery was nice but I didn't see much as after 12 hours I went down sick with many visits to the toilet (you can see the tracks through it), stomach cramps and even a bit of vomiting to complete the pretty picture. All made me a tad unsympathetic to the transvestite beggars much to Bhaarat's amusement!

Bangalore - there's no much to say other than isn't Indian. Feels like a weekend cit break back home: fast-food, swanky bars/restaurants, outlets of levis and other designer boutiques not to mention the weird site of western people who blatantly live here - doing grocery shopping, kids playing etc! It's been fun to meet up with the other gappers though and we had a really nice meal out for Naomi's birthday even if the club shut at 11! Back to India tomorrow with Fort Cochi the first stop on our keralan adventure...

---