Delhi

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When I landed in Delhi my main pack was following me, and would have just landed in Bangkok from LAX. This meant that I had to stick around for a while to wait for it to catch up with me. Thai airlines had been great about it and agreed to give me $75 for the trouble. It worked out great in my 19 hours in Bangkok since I never had to worry about a large pack.
I had arranged a pick up from the airport and they took me to my guesthouse in Paraganj, where I got a great room with no windows and a fan. This seemed to work out great since there was no noise from outside, and the heat didn't get to come in either, although it was pretty hot! A good deal at about $1.
The next day I got up and decided to walk to a place for breakfast. I was looking for a particular place, but with no luck and things are so visually busy in Paraganj it was not surprizing.
I met a nice young man who told me he was a student (yeah right) and we walked together while I looked for a place for breakfast. After 1/2 an hour in Delhi I realized that having this guy talking to me actually was ok, since it stopped all the other people coming up to talk to me. I would always be approached if I wasn't "taken". The student was trying to get me to go to a travel agent friend of his, but I was keen to get breakfast. We ended up at a big roundabout (there are many of these in Delhi) and he showed me a great dive bar where I got some dhal which was great - some great locals were eating here too.
After he had shown me to such a great breakfast spot I agreed to visit, but just visit a travel agent. After a walk through a very heavy shower - monsoon season just about to begin we got to the travel agent in connaught place.
An hour later I was walking out of the travel agent with new plans. Rather than taking the toy train up to Shimla I would now be flying up to Srinigar in Kashmir to stay 3 nights on a houseboat on Dal Lake. This seemed like a great deal for about $100 including flight, 3 nights pre-paid on the lake (oops - probably best not to prepay - as you can read about later), and he also threw in a car and a driver for the next 2 days. This also meant that I would get to visit Leh on the way down to Himichal Pradesh from Kashmir.
I met my new driver - Krishna and we went to the Bahai Lotus Temple which was lovely and also saw the Red Fort before taking dinner at his house cooked by a women who he would like to be his wife, but she was previously married to a guy that died and his children do not like the idea of her getting married again...
It was interesting eating dinner at his house close to Paraganj in Delhi. There was a power cut just before dinner so we had to wait for it to come back on before we could have hot food.

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