Thumping Day

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Blog 7, Thumping Day (as I told the kids)



Day 27. Wednesday 27^th December



We paid our room bill after breakfast which was much less than I expected Rs13000 rather than Rs22000, then we paid our restaurant tab which I had estimated at around Rs20000 but they only charged us Rs8600! I did query this saying that it should be much more, but was assured it was right. I think they were genuinely very happy to have us to stay! The blind fools.



We had to check out by 10am but were allowed to keep our bags in reception and went for a walk in the Nature Forest again, down the road. The kids enjoyed it again especially the long concrete slide and we could keep an eye on them from the shade of some trees above for a few hours, laughing about our past exploits here and Mal’s accidents of course. Although we had problems at this Hotel, somehow they were counteracted by the friendly staff, who were great, often looking after Esmee for hours – apparently they put her on reception for a while and she was asked by a customer for the wi-fi code and straight away told Sunny (the proper receptionist) to give them it. They have offered her a job there… with schooling and a car.



So a lazy day really, took ages to say goodby and take group photos, we then took 2 auuto-ricks to the station with all our bags. I was in one with Rocco & lots of bags, the others in another but with Esmee driving! She was sat between the drivers legs and apparently took control for a while!



Agra Cantt. Station is a bit further away than Agra Fort (where we arrived) and has the same stupid “security” meaning all bags had to go through a scanner and we had to walk through one too. But considering there were no guards there, it all seemed utterly pointless. Once on Platform 1 we thought we may need porters to carry our bags to Platform 6 from whence our train should leave, but luckily 6 was an appendage next to 1, so we just rolled our bags along to it. Our train was in but doors were locked, we had to wait 30 mins for the doors to open. Again we had aircraft type seats and were served food & drink; a free ½ litre bottle of water; a carton of rather sharp orange juice; a meal of lentil burger in a bun with spicy chickpea accompanyment, some green stuff which I left alone, a bag of peanuts and a small kofta-type sweet (which Esmee did not like). Esmee was sitting next to me and when we next got a cup of tea she managed to spill some on her leg which I mopped up as best I could, this was befor any milk or sugar was added so it must have hurt. Poor Esmee but she is always playing with her food and asked for black tea with milk on the side at our hotel so she could play with it and often spilt somewhere. A little 2 year old girl up the carriage started playing peek-a-boo with me and soon came to join us with her 8 year old brother, they were from Bangalore and did not speak Hindi but quite good English. The little girl sang Rudolf the red-nosed rheindeer to us and Shirl had her in stitches with her peek-a-boo’s. We arrived at Hazrat Nizzamudin Station at 7.45pm (15mins late) the journey took 1hr 45mins.



We needed 3 porters to carry our bags to the carpark and had alreadypicked up a taxi tout. I showed him my map showing where our hotl was and we haggled him down from Rs1200 to Rs1000. He said it was 2 hours away which I knew it wasn’t, he said that traffic was bad at this time of night which it wasn’t, he then took us to the wrong hotel next to the airport and I had to insist he go where my map showed our hotel to be. He then rang our hotel and finally drove there. When we arrived he claimed I had given him the wrong address but I showed a porter at our hotel the map and he confirmed that it was accurate. I think Shirl gave him the extra Rs200, I wouldn’t have.



This hotel is quite nice; room service, TV, a snack & soft drinks bar, etc. The main drawback – we seem to be on the main flightpath to the airport! Just hope they stop soon. Aaarggh…always something!

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Comments

[Amy Friedman]

more!
I am all caught up with reading your excellent blog posts so you are free to go have more adventures! See more elephants, cows, and motorcycles! Climb more steps!