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Our Motel on the way to Delhi
While the hotel had splendid rooms as you will see, it was classed as a traditional Indian hotel. The ice cream was OK though. Saturday 1 May
John and I have made it safely to Delhi! This in our view is a great achievement. Our time in Amritsar was a little short so we had a short rickshaw ride round the city before setting off on the road to Delhi. It soon became clear that all we had heard about the driving conditions and roads in India were true. I will come back to our experiences in a moment but just to finish off Amritsar, which was a great place to start our journey of discovery into India. Our guide and ‘biker’ was most enthusiastic about our adventure and in broken, haltering English (far better than my or John’s Urdu) he described the various places he took us to around the city, especially a park that was under a major rejuvenation programme. What was intriguing was the way the main house, splendid in its day, was being renovated, bit by bit, stone by stone, and a lot of the collection of stone for the stone masons themselves was being collected and delivered by women shovelling up stones into a basin that went onto their heads to carry to the site for transfer into the
The bedroom
Just an intimate view of the rooms we found ourselves having to take, as we were both tired and needed to sleep! building via a crude roping system. Slow, ponderous, methodical and back-breaking in the heat of the day.
We left the city about midday, with around 475 kilometres to travel to Delhi. We had done such distances before but it became obvious as we drove that the constant braking, swerving, slowing and avoiding (collisions!) was taking its toll on our time and so we decided to stop halfway. We chose a town that we thought would have a hotel. It was called - don’t even attempt to enter the town - its an appalling place and after a fruitless search for a hotel where we could park the car, we abandoned the search and continued down the road. As luck would have it we came across a road-side inn, with rooms available. We were soon being entertained by the ‘Chairman’ of the Shree Krishna Enterprises inn, Ambala who was an ebullient sort of guy who was very quick to point out that he carried a gun! He had asked me with my background if there was a way he could get a holster for his 3.2mm Smith and Weston revolver, as importing such things into India was rather ‘difficult’. When he
Overland metro
There's a lot happening in Delhi - roads and metro extensions are going to make access to the city much easier in future. took it out of his holster I asked if it was loaded; “of course”, as he demonstrated the spinning of the bullets. “Please don’t point it at us, I have seen some nasty accidents with loaded weapon.” says I. He was a very friendly man who ensured that we were in good rooms. Actually, they were probably the most salubrious we had been in since leaving Iran apart from our wonderful stopover in Lahore. John had no qualms about sleeping in the four poster bed!
Continuing our journey in the morning, it is difficult to describe the way people drive over here. There is no warning as to what they are going to do; they tear up behind you when you are crawling along behind a truck overtaking another truck, blasting their horns, expecting you to jump aside for them - this applies to whether you are driving a bus, lorry, car, motorbike, or tuk tuk. Its a constant pressure game driving over here, and several times we have had to take avoiding actions to stop being squeezed off the road, damaged or hitting a donkey cart! The express way over here is for everyone. We also have to content
Driving
Its difficult to capture the intenseness of driving in this city. How things, vehicles, and people don't collide more often I do not know. with drivers who think that the inside lane can be used to drive the other way up the express way! So wits about us are essential and we cannot see it getting any better once we are away from Delhi. I hope some of the photos might just convey some of the closeness of traffic over here. We also picked up a slow puncture, the first, while in Pakistan, and stopping by one of the many tire workshops aligning the express way, the problem was spotted, a nail, removed and plugged for all of 30 rupees, about 40p!
Our hotel tonight is a pot luck affair, picked from the great bible, the Lonely Planet, and one that didn’t rate the staff too highly. Actually, although in the middle of a district that looks a little like some parts of Mostar that I visited, bomb-blasted and buildings destroyed, the hotel is modern, air-conditioned and has a lovely roof-top cafe. We arrived earlier enough to visit the Red Fort, an amazing feat of engineering and building by an emperor from the Mogul dynasty, with walls achieving a height of over 30 metres in places and entrapping an area within that is surrounded
Mayhem
Another view of what we were having to navigate through. by walls extending for over two kilometres in length. Needless to say the British have had their presence in this world heritage site, and indeed occupied it right up to 1947 when India was given its independence.
Tonight we have had our first rain - a heavy down pour accompanied with some spectacular lightening - things to come I suspect.
Cannot believe its now the beginning of May but that’s time for you. As a result of a visit to the Indian Government’s Tourist Office we are having to stay one extra night in Delhi to allow us to speak about car insurance and also to visit the Foreigners’ Regional Office to see if we can get a change to our visas to allow us into Nepal for a few days. Thanks to a few, the Indian Government has tightened up on the opportunity of visiting Nepal without worrying about re-entry into this country. At the moment, if we did visit Nepal, it is possible that we could find ourselves in Nepal for up to two months, so we need to try and resolve this issue on Monday. Then it will be off to Agar to see the Taj Mahal.
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Annie Smith
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Delhi
You comments on Delhi brought it back from when Valerie and I were there for my birthday in 2008 and the thing we talked about was how no one hit each other driving and how the cows can not be moved, another thing we noticed was the electics over head especially in the old market it was like spagetti above you how they ever found what went where if it broke down. Barry you are really amazing with your story telling I know I keep saying it but its true. Take care of yourswelves and Agra is great but do try and go to " Fatehpur Sikri" its on the outskirts of Agra and wonderful we loved it the best of all the Temples we saw including The Taj Mahal. All the very best Annie