Day 17: Hi Delhi for the second time

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Our bus is a deluxe bus and all the passengers were told by the travel agent that the bus is air-conditioned, but the air-cond was not on at all. I wasn't so fussy about it and I managed to fall asleep but I heard some people complained about the air-cond, the bus staff said the air-cond is not working, and the passenger demanded a fraction of money to be paid back because the bus has no air-cond. Everntually after a few arguments and yelling, the air-cond was turned on. What a cheater huh.

Me and Elena originally sat together, but because there were many empty seats on the bus, Elena moved to other seats, thus we each has our own spacious seats. We reached Delhi at 6.30am, the journey was surprisingly on time. We had anticipated we would reach at 8.30am because when we went to McLeod, we took 6.30pm bus and reached McLeod at 8.30am. Well that’s a good thing. We then checked-in to Gakhyil House (the same hotel we previously stayed during our first night in India), this is the first time we shared a room. Thanks to Tenzin for helping us book the room.

After check-in and without shower, we asked the hotel receptionist how to go to the nearest Mcd and we were told to take rickshaw to Kamla Nagar. Thus we took rickshaw for Rs 40 to McD. We reach there around 7.50am and McD opens only at 8am, so we had to wait a while. In India, when they say they open at 8am, it means the staffs come at 8am, but none of the food is ready yet, nor the place is cleaned. I ordered McSpicy Chicken meal but it tasted rather different from the one in Singapore. Anyway it’s a good cure after 2 weeks of Italian food in McLeod.

After breakfast, we took rickshaw-metro-rickshaw to the National Zoological Park. It wasn’t a very hot day in Delhi, thus it was a perfect day for zoo and Elena loves zoo. Entrance fee was Rs 100. It was a huuuugeeee zoo. It was so tiring to walk the whole park. It has elephant, zebra, giraffe, tiger, rhinoceros, a few types of deer, a few types of birds, and monkeys.

After zoo, we wanted to have KFC for lunch. Neil had told us that Chandni Chowk has KFC so we went there but all we found was Railway Station. Thus we decided to go back to Kamla Nagar because we’ve seen a KFC there. We took rickshaw. After KFC, we went to Costa Coffee, Elena bought coffee, and we love the store. Too bad it didn’t have wifi.

Then we went back hotel around 3. We were planning to bring just 1 backpack and 1 handbag for each of us, and Tenzin said we could put our other bags in his office, so we moved our things to his office that afternoon as our train to Agra leaves early morning the next day and he won’t be in office when we leave. After moving bags, he told us that there is ceremony going on in the temple that is near our hotel because that day is Buddha Birthday, so we went to the temple. We saw many ration bags in front of the temple. I guess the bags are for poor people of Tibetan refugees. After snatching some photos of the place and the people, we went back hotel and hang out at G Café to use the wifi but it didn’t really work that day. We went back to room to shower and rest afterwards. We went to bed early (at 9) because it has been a long day and we need to wake up at 3 the next morning to catch our train to Agra.

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