Carpet bagger

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I felt like doing a repeat of yesterday's mountain of bacon and hash browns for breakfast this morning, but as I was sitting at my table downing a glass of orange juice before heading for the buffet, I noticed an extremely fat gentleman nearby with a heaped plate of bacon and hash browns in front of him. I took this as a warning, and ate fruit instead.

The auto driver who took me up to Connaught Place said that he thought I was Indian, and also that I was about 25. This made me wonder whether his eyesight was suitable for driving any sort of road transport. However I soon realised he was just trying to butter me up when he then started suggesting taking me to various stores, which obviously he would then get commission from.

Fortunately most shops were open today, though a couple of markets that I'd intended visiting weren't. First item on the agenda was to buy some carpets. I decided to go to a government shop, as I figured the quality of the carpets would be assured there, even if the prices were higher. Of course, I know absolutely nothing about carpets so was also reliant on the seller being honest about the provenance and material employed in the carpet. After a cup of tea and some half-hearted bargaining, I walked out of the place with 2 pashmina carpets, both of which look great and are soft to the touch. I must confess I spent a good few hours afterwards wondering just whether I'd had a good deal or not.

With that first purchase out of the way, the floodgates opened and before I knew it, I had a new carry-on suitcase, a fistful of CDs, some books (including Hull's seminal work on derivatives - a mere $8 when the cheapest used copy on Amazon was ~$50), a few Tibetan thangkas (mainly mandalas rather than Buddhas, as the Buddha selection was grim - all these were a good 50% more than if I'd bought them in Dharamsala), some small, though still heavy, bronzes, tea, and a variety of other things.

All this buying had resulted in me feeling rather ravenous so I decided to try out McDonald's - partly to fill up my stomach, and partly to see how it compared with Mackers in other countries. There are, after all, not that many global products that can be evaluated in such a way. With no Big Macs available, I went for a McChicken sandwich and a Filet-o-fish, with the latter especially being superior to the last one I'd had in the US. With fries and a Coke, this came to about $4, so was by no means cheap by Indian standards.

I'd sent a T-shirt and trousers to the laundry this morning, just so I'd have some clean clothes to travel back in tomorrow. Compared with the usual Rs 10 or 20 per garment that I'd been accustomed to throughout India, this was the equivalent of nearly $10. However the trousers did come back minus an oil stain that had stymied at least 5 dhobis, and the T-shirt was presented in a box with a red rose on top.

I dined in Rick's Bar, as I'd been told it got crowded and had a good atmosphere on a Thursday, so I wanted to stake a claim to a table early on. The food was most strange, with their pork gyoza not containing a single dumpling, and the chicken ramen's only resemblance to ramen being that it contained noodles. Fortunately the Kingfisher tasted as expected, so I was able to sip away at that (and subsequently a variety of weird cocktails) while thinking back over the last 4 months. The thought of leaving India tomorrow was a bizarre one indeed, as the date seemed to have suddenly loomed up in front of me without any warning. I tried going back in my mind over the different places I'd seen, the changing view that I'd had of India, its people, and its culture, and how I felt that I had changed since I first set foot here.

My musings were interrupted by the DJ cranking up the volume on the sound system, to the point where my trousers were pulsating with the bass. There then followed an '80s set that was straight out of my CD collection - Roxette, Level 42, a-ha, etc. There was even a burst of Right Said Fred, which may or may not have been aimed at 2 bald guys sitting at a neighbouring table. Things wound up with George Macrae and finally some "Kungfu Fighting", and I left at closing time a happy man.

I spent the wee small hours packing everything up. Unfortunately my new suitcase isn't quite big enough to cope with all the things I bought but, with a bit of squeezing and cramming, everything is now in either my rucksack or my suitcase. It feels odd to be heading back to the UK, as I've spent no time at all thinking about either what I'll do there or where the next leg of my travels will be. I think that's going to be one of the lessons learned from this trip - plenty of things seen, but not enough thinking time.

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