Rickshaws, shit scams and the flight from Delhi

I'm sorry about this, but this will be a long post. You may wish to get a cushion and a cup of chai (tea) first.

To pick up where I left off, that evening (after the fun at the bank), and that post, we went out for an evening gander through Delhi. The evening was quite nice, less hot and humid, so more pleasant in that respect. India is very much alive in the evening, things seem to wake up at about ten in the morning and go on until midnight. We walked up to Connaught Place - the main central grassy area of Delhi - which, in the midnight light, appeared to have far too perfect grass (the morning showed it to be a bit brown and patchy though). We walked through the markets and got hassled fairly relentlessly. One guy tried to sell Loz a map. He started at Rs400, and each time Loz told him he didn't want it (he actually didn't) the guy went down by Rs100. He got below Rs100 by the time he cottoned on to the fact he really didn't want a map. Loz also got himself a cheap watch, complete with painted on chronometers and plastic buttons, for Rs250 (haggled down from Rs400). And that was that for the evening.

The next day (Tuesday), we were up at about 8.30am and I had an unbelievably refreshing shower (though I was dirty and sweaty again within about 5 minutes!). At breakfast we met the rest of the Aussies (we had met Hugh the day before) including Mike, my gap partner for the next few months. We all gelled quickly and are getting along really well. Got my tickets for the 12 hour bus ride from Delhi to Dharamasala, on an apparently A/Ced bus (more later). They were Rs530 (=6/7 quid - again no pound sign on this keyboard, and I can't remember the alt+code). That is pretty cheap, you'll agree, for such a long bus journey.

We then met Rekha, the GAP rep in Delhi. She gave us a general introduction to India, which was interesting. If you wanted to know, the Indian international dialing code is +91. Next an official from the Tibetans-in-exile government came to talk to us about the Tibetans. He was a very cheerful guy, whilst at the same time he seemed a little bit quiet and shy. He was full of glowing praise (most of which I believe is very true) about the Tibetan people. He also advised us not to talk to monks about sex.

For lunch we went out to Nirula's, which is a sort of East meets West McDonald's of India. I got a chicken tikka burger and chips (for example), but you could get meals more Indian and more Western than that. I will put some pictures of that up somewhere sometime. It was far superior to McDonald's in cleanliness, taste, staff, price and pretty much every other respect too. After some more markets and bazaars, we made it back to the YMCA for a short Hindi lesson with Rekha. A quick note about Delhi - it often smells! But you get used to it.

We learnt some useful Hindi: "nhai" is 'no' (extremely useful!), and "nhai chaahiye" is 'no I don't want it'. Those are the best phrases, there is also "namaste" ('hello') and "shukriya" ('thank you').

We went next to Juntar Mundar, an astrological/space-time related park. It's hard to explain about it, so go look it up if you're interested. It has lots of red structures: random staircases, colluseum-esque things, etc. (again pictures will follow). It is fantastic because in India (unlike the UK) you can climb on and walk all over these sorts of things. At home it would be fenced off and have big safety barriers everywhere. In India, you have to look out for yourself. It was well worth the Rs100 entry fee, but that doesn't make the discrepancy between that and the Indian resident price of Rs5 (which Rohit managed to blag for himself) any better. We sat in the park for a while and a bunch of young Indian guys (ranging from probably 12 to our age or so) came and filmed us, we all took pictures of each other and they showed a large interest in filming the girls in the group... It was strange to be the centre of such attention, but you quickly get used to being watched as a white foreigner in India.

We ran out of time to go to Ghandi's memorial on this day, so we wandered through some markets again. I picked up 'Midnight's Children' (despite what Grubin says about it) for just Rs180 (=2.33 quid). Interestingly enough, this same streetside bookseller sold 'Mein Kampf' side-by-side with 'The Diary of Anne Frank', apparently unaware of the irony. Dinner was another fairly generic curry (this time with egg, not meat). We spent the evening in on one of the balconies, talking about all sorts (much of which I wouldn't post here, I don't want to upset my dear family :)). It was on this night that love began to blossom between Becky and Loz, which was cute, but we were fairly merciless in our mocking the next night. In the nicest possible way, of course (we would expect the same treatment in the same position).