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2008/2009 Nepal & India

Day 65 – Delhi, India

Monday, 2 February 2009

Rudely awoken from sleep we called for a taxi at 1:30am and headed down to reception.

We met an Iraqi gentleman who bought SB a beer and as he only spoke Arabic we gathered he came from Baghdad, liked Australians and Barrack Obama, didn’t like George Bush and his baby was killed in the war.  Apparently he is here to see a doctor as he has a heart condition, although from the amount he smoked and drank not sure how serious it is.  The taxi finally arrived at 2am and we got to the airport 40 minutes later as there wasn’t much traffic on the road.  We got into the aiport and Kathy’s flight was early and she was waiting for us.

We headed back to the taxi and back to the hotel to have some sleep ready for a new part of the adventure and a hopefully an eye opening trip for Kathy.

We left the hotel at 09:30am and headed to Rama’s for the traditional breakfast before getting a tuk tuk to Connaught Place where Kathy changed some money and SB then had a look through some bookstores where he purchased some books and we caught the metro to Chandni Chowk and walked to Jama Masjid as it was lunch time it was closed to non-muslims so we waited and had a wander around and bought some bangles – let the shopping commence, thank goodness SB is taking home most of my stuff.  They wanted to charge us to enter the Mosque and when we questioned the guy, it was changed to being a camera charge, so SB waited outside with the bags and we had a wander around.

Entrance to Jama Masjid
Entrance to Jama Masjid

We went to Chawri Bazaar where we looked at all the handmade papers which Kathy bought some samples of some absolutely beautiful paper.  Chandni Chowk was still the absolute maze of people and some fascinating examples of electrical cabling we remember.

Not sure this would be past Australia's electrical rules.
Not sure this would be past Australia

We walked to Haldirams for a snack and cold drink before getting the metro back to Karol Bagh and a rest before dinner.  The weather in Delhis quite hot, but nowhere as humid as Kolkata.