Day 63 - 18th Apr 2009

So at 2:15am on day 63 we boarded our very last flight and 9 hours later at 6:30am we landed back in England. Jeanette and Duncan were there to meet us off the flight and give us a lift back to Finchley. It was great to see them again and good to be back home. It's strange how you appreciate things which you usually take for granted, like people driving on the correct side of the road; and pavements. And especially seeing and being closer to friends and family, just being in the same country is great.

Day 62 - 17th Apr 2009

So our last day. It's hard to believe that we've been away for 9 weeks, although it does seem ages since we were in England. It's also strange thinking about everywhere we've been to and all the things we've seen and done. We have another quick check of our email at the hotel and also have a quick look at some of the pictures on our website, it is so weird seeing America and Australia pictures again! We ordered the same breakfast of French toast but to be honest when it comes I am not convinced it has ever seen an egg! Perhaps it serves us right for not having the buffet!

We check out and leave our big bags with our floor man to look after. Adam gave him a big tip in the hope that means he'll not nick anything or loose anything!

We walked to Connaught Place again but this time via the main tourist shopping street, there's shops selling all sorts. Adam bought me a nice bag from a nice shop where the people didn't hassle us.

I'm afraid we did another lunch vote and McDonalds won again! There's only so much Indian food you can face and our stomachs were not yet fully recovered from last night's Indian meal with beer. We should perhaps write a book on McDonalds of the world! After a quick walk by the Tibetan market we got a moto to the Red Fort. This is really nice and has some great buildings inside. It was strange though because several groups and young men kept asking to have their picture taken with us or just me. We were almost like celebraties, it was really weird and some people would just take a picture without asking!

We got another moto back to the hotel and had a drink while we waited for our taxi. The floor man brought our bags down and was pretty happy to get another tip from us, so he hung about and helped to get our stuff in the taxi, he didn't get any more tips but I think he was still happy as he waved us off!

The traffic in Delhi is truly crazy and there is no way I would drive there. We arrived at the airport with bags of time to spare but you can't even go into the main building unless you have a ticket for a flight leaving within the next 3 hours. There is however a small food court and a smallish seating area. So we got some dinner at the food court, a member of staff wanted to move our bags away because they were apparently blocking the aisle, we refused, surely an airport and an Indian one at that is not the kind of place to let your bags out of your sight!

After a couple of hours waiting we were allowed into the airport and we checked-in no problem and it was time for some more waiting...

Day 61 - 16th Apr 2009

We had a leisurely start to the day and began with checking our emails. The hotel is a little bit strange, I think they mean well but it sometimes comes across as weird. We thought there would be wifi and there was a complaints form which said if wifi was unavailable they'd give you 100 rupees but when we asked they just said it wasn't working yet as they didn't have the security installed. They also kept asking if everything was ok with our room and then asking our room number. We decided to use their internet cafe which was also slightly strange, but the computers worked so I guess it didn't matter. We then had breakfast at the hotel which was also slightly weird, they have a menu with breakfast items on but you have to really insist to see it as they seem to just want to sell the buffet. Anyway we were insistant and managed to get what we wanted.

We thought we'd have a walk to Connaught Place. This was ok but we spent awhile saying no to rickshaw drivers and then telling people we didn't want to go to their shop. It got a bit tiring to be honest. We ventured into an underground shopping mall which was kinda interesting but we didn't stay down there for long! We also walked round a small market where I ended up getting really annoyed and pretty much shouted at a tiny Indian man selling wallets. He just wouldn't take no for an answer and when he started tapping my shoulder I lost it! We also called into a government run shop which was very odd as nobody hassled us at all, in fact they really didn't seem bothered in helping at all! Once we had chosen our purchase we had to take it to a counter, the lady there gave us an invoice which we had to take to the payment counter, after paying we had to take the receipt they gave us to the collection counter where we could pick up our purchase and then when we walked out security had to stamp our receipt. It was all kinda complicated.

After a fairly short debate about where to have lunch we choose the not very adventurous option of McDonalds! At least you know what you're going to get and you're pretty sure it won't make you ill.

We then headed to the National Museum. This was interesting and we got an audio guide which was quite good. It was definately good to be out of the heat.

We then went back to the hotel and decided to have dinner on the roof terrace, well some tables and chairs that they'd put on the roof. As we headed for a table we were asked in a hushed voice if we wanted any beer we said we'd have 2. After placing our food order, which was slightly complicated but we eventually got ourselves understood, and waiting for quite a while our beer came. It was presented to us in big coffee mugs! The food was really good and we ordered 2 more beers. Two local looking people sat on a table next to us and all beer talk went quiet, eventually our next 2 came in our same mugs. Later when Adam paid we found out that the hotel isn't allowed to have alcohol and they don't offer it to Indians becuase they get too lound after a drink but foreigners can handle it. So if anyone asks they say we've got fruit juice!

Day 60 - 15th Apr 2009

The day started as yesterday with another unwanted wake up call at 5:15, great! I thought I had solved the problem the night before by unplugging the phone, but no of course there was a second phone in the bathroom, which is of course what everybody needs! This time I phoned the operator to complain straight away, but still got no apology!

Today we were catching our final train to Delhi our last stop of the trip. We left our room at 9 and luckily had allowed ourselves plenty of time to get to the station as it took over 20 minutes to check out. First a queue and then very slow staff. The chap at the desk asked me how my stay was and I said not great as I kept getting woken up at 5:15, for a moment he seemed concerned and asked if I had not wanted a wake up call and then wandered off to (I presumed) check what had gone wrong. I thought to myself at last someone who is interested and might apologise, but no I think he had just gone to hide as he never came back.

We got a moto to the train station as the hotel had been unable to book me a taxi and arrived about half an hour before our train was due to leave. We found our platform and would you believe it the train was on time! (Well ok technically it might have been ten minutes late but the woman on the load speaker kept telling us it was on time.) By the time we got to Delhi 4 hours later we seemed to have managed to be an hour late, oh well...

We dodged all the taxi touts at the station and managed to make it through the huge sea of people. Our hotel was just a short walk down the road and round the corner. We checked in and a friendly chap showed us to our room, which biazzarly was still being cleaned, I think the chap was in charge of our floor and said to let him know if we needed anything.

We ate lunch of an Indian curry at the hotel restaurant which was very nice and then headed out to look at Delhi. We walked from our hotel through Paharganj which is the budget accomadation part of Delhi, it was pretty busy and the dirt and pollution isn't really very pleasant. We saw some cows in the street which stank!

We then headed to Connaught place which we had read was the 'nice' part of Delhi and to be honest we weren't greatly impressed. Ok it is cleaner than the streets we had just left behind, but it still wasn't particularly nice and we were still bothered by rickshaw drivers and people trying to give us advice that we didn't want.

We had a look at the Tibetan market which was kind of interesting though we didn't look too closely at any of the shops as we couldn't be bothered with the hastle.

We had dinner at McDonalds! Not very adventurous I know, but we were ready for an easy option. Though obviously a McDs in the land of the holy cow is not quite the same as in the good old US of A and seemed to us to have most of it's menu missing. I resited the urge to order a big mac and see what reaction we got and instead we both went for chicken burgers. We got a moto back to the hotel and we were going to our room the chap was still there and again asked us if everything was ok and if we needed anything, he then muttered secretively that he could get us some beer if we wanted! I declined and we went to our room to relax and read our books.

At about 9 O'clock there was a knock on the door and there was another chap who introduced himself as the night attendant for the floor and again wanted to know if we needed anything: towels, tea, coffee, beer... It all seemed quite strange.

Day 59 - 14th Apr 2009

We decided we would get up early today to go and see the Taj Mahal before it got too hot. Unfortunately we didn't intend to get up as early as 5.15am which was when the phone rang in our room! Surprisingly I was not happy. We got up slightly later and tried to ask reception why we'd been rang up and if they could make sure it didn't happen tomorrow, I'm not sure they understood and offered us a wake up call!

We decided to walk to the Taj Mahal just becuase we couldn't face the hassle of using the rickshaws or motos. It was perhaps a 20 minute walk but as it was early it wasn't too hot. We got our tickets and eventually made it through security, you're not allowed wires in the Taj Mahal! First there's a big kinda of court yard and the Taj is behind a huge gate so you can't see it. As you walk through the gate you get a full view of it. It is amazing, so big and so white. It is quite hard to comprehend the size and it was only really later when there where loads of people round the bottom of it you could see how big it is. We walked up to the bottom of it and you can go inside and see the inlaid marble and carvings all quite impressive. I think that the pollution is maybe getting to it though and you can see yellow patches appearing where it should be white.

After spending some time in the grounds, it was nice to have some peace and quiet, we headed out again. We thought we'd walk back but try and find a different way. There are loads of marble and souvenir shops all trying to get you in. We wanted a drink and asked the price at a place, it was double the normal price so we carried and about 400 metres further down there was another shop selling drinks at the regular price. We decided as they weren't ripping people off with the drinks we'd also get poatcards and a couple of souvenirs from them, the chap was friendly and we had fun haggling with him. I think both buyer and seller left happy.

As we were walking back we ended up in a not so touristy area, which was really interesting to see but at a point I did wonder if we should have just walked back the way we knew! A couple of local kids decided to follow us for quite a long way. It was really hard as they just kept pestering us and I felt really mean ignoring them but I'd read about kids just wanting money and stuff from westerners so we decided it was best to not get involved. Eventually we hit the main road and knew where we were, it was a bit of a relief, it was good to see another side to Agra but I wouldn't want to hang around there for too long. Some of the smells were revolting and the conditions people were living in were disgusting. The place is just so dirty with so many people just going about their daily lives, living in it.

To be honest I felt pretty bad as we ate our pizza hut lunch, the amount we were spending in there compared to the amount of money some of the people must have is obscene, but it was good pizza. We felt bad about not eating from local restaurants but with the things we had read about illness and the state some of the places looked we decided it wasn't worth it.

After a short rest at the hotel we decided to head out to see Agra Fort. On the way out we called into the hotel shop, this was a mistake as we were shown loads of elephant ornaments and kept being told he would give us a good price. Eventually he offered us an elephant for about £15! We left fairly quickly.

The fort is pretty impressive if not slightly similar to yesterdays visit to Fatehpur Sikri. from the fort you can look across to the Taj, which was still hard to tell its size. There were some interesting carvings and marble work and architecture so it was good to wander around and look at it all. Obviously as we left there was the usual bombardment of sellers, with postcards and necklaces and ornaments. We had taken to just ignoring people unless we actually wanted to buy something. It felt kinda of rude ignoring people but it did seem to work as they soon gave up asking you to buy stuff.

Back at the hotel we tried out the swimming pool and decided to eat dinner in the hotel restaurant. Whilst we were waiting for the restaurant to open for dinner Adam went across the road to a shop he'd been too a couple of times for water. The shop was also an internet cafe, which Adam told me was actually just a computer in the basement! Ad also bought me a marble elephant from the shop and seemed to make friends with the owner as he ended up giving him his email address and the guy asked if Ad had anything he could give him as a present to remember him by! When Ad said he only had a hotel pencil the guy said perhaps the hotel had some other good stuff Ad could give to him.

As we walked into reception to go dinner we saw there was a puppet theatre set up, kinda strange, we declined the offer to watch a show and went for some food.

Day 58 - 13th Apr 2009

So the day started at midnight sat on our bags on platform 1 of Lucknow train station. It's probably worth mentioning that the train station didn't particularly look like you might expect a train station to be like at midnight. It was very well lit, which made it hard to tell the time of day, and there were people everywhere! Some coming, some going, some selling things, some pushing huge trollies stacked with sacks of I don't know what, and like us loads of people sat waiting.

After it was about an hour after our train was due to arrive we thought we would head across to the platform where it was due to arrive and wait there; for a change of scenery if nothing else. On arriving at platform 5 we soon realised that this perhaps wasn't such a great idea: platform 5 was much dingier than platform 1; spelt of something rather nasty (probably urine) and after spotting a rat and a different train pulling into where we were expecting ours we decided to retreat back to platform 1. Once there we discovered by looking at a different board that it appeared our train was actually going to be 2 hours late, great! I was beginning to feel pretty tired and I think that Liz was too so when an annoucement came over the tanoy to say our train was arriving on platform 4, after over 2 hours of waiting, we were both pretty relieved.

So next challenge was to find our seats/beds. We spotted the only 2nd class air conditioned coach on the train as it pulled in to the station so we thought that must be our one even though it wasn't labelled up with a coach number. On boarding we found that the narrow corridor down the centre was pretty busy and we were struggling to get down with our big bags. Also all the seat numbers were pretty high and we had low seat numbers, so we decided to get off and get back on on the other end. This time we made better headway down the carriage and made it to the four person berth where our seats were, I felt pretty relieved and pulled back the curtain only to discover it was already full with 4 indian men! One of them asked what seat numbers I had and when I said he said yes this is right these are your seats, so we squashed in the 6 of us and our 2 big bags. I guess I should have been a bit annoyed, but to be honest I was so tired and pleased that a train had actually turned up that for the moment I really didn't care. It turned out that 3 of the men were just sitting there while they "sorted out some confusion" and after a few minutes the conductor arrived and took them off to some different seats leaving just the three of us in the berth. Unfortunately for us the man who was left behind was the loudest snorer we have met on the trip yet! So as it was my silly idea to catch the overnight trains I leant Liz my iPod to block out the noise and tried to sleep the best I could.

We arrived at our next destination, Agra, at about 9am and managed to dodge the initial taxi drivers trying to get us to go out a side entrance and made it to the pre paid taxi counter. We paid our fee and our driver took us to his car and we set off to the hotel. He took us straight there with out any messing around, trying to take us to other hotels or shops where he got comission as we had read might happen in the guide book, which in our tired state we were quite pleased about. We also booked him to take us to Fatehpur Sikri in the afternoon as we figured he seemed alright, although we weren't sure whether his price was over inflated...

This time we didn't get to have our room straight away but had to wait about 45 minutes. Once there we had an hour or so sleep to try and catch up and then headed to the hotel restaurant for lunch.

At 2 O' clock we met our taxi driver outside, who had brought his friend with him to keep him compnay while he waited for us. It seemed a little bit strange, but we went along with it. It took us about one and a quarter hours to get to Fatehpur Sikri which is an old abadoned palace which used to be the capital. The friend was quite chatty and about our age and spoke very good english.

We arrived at Fatehpur Sikri and decided to catch the bus to the palace. As we walked to the bus stop someone approached us and asked if we wanted a guide, we said no but he just didn't want to take no for an answer and followed us all the way to the bus, he was really very annoying and we ended up having to be a bit rude to get him to leave us alone.

The palace itself was pretty amazing, it had been sat empty for 400 years since the water supply dried up, but from it's condition you never would have guessed. It was a huge complex with elaborate carvings and arcitechure. It was definitely worth the journey.

On the way back the friend started talking about some of the carvings that Agra was famous for and asked if we wanted to see some on the way back. It sounded like the beginnings of a marble shop commision scam to us so we politely declined. Then a bit further on he started asking us if we liked tea or spices, I guess he had a different shop in mind, but again we said no. Then his next attempt was asking Liz if she wanted to wear a Sari when she went to the Taj Mahal to have her photograph taken wearing it, but surprisingly Liz wasn't keen! And his final attempt was he wanted to take us to a restaurant for dinner, we got out of that one by saying that we had already paid for our meals at the hotel (technically a lie, but a change from just saying no thanks) so eventually we made it back to our hotel without any unwanted side trips.

We were pretty tired so had room service for dinner which was pretty cheap by western standards.

Day 57 - 12th Apr 2009

We started the day with breakfast at our hotel then headed out to see some sights. The first one was a temple which was within walking distance of our hotel. As we emerged from our hotel lobby two rickshaw drivers spotted us from the end of the road and started running towards their rickshaw then raced to get to us first. Unfortunately for them after yesterdays experience's we had decided we weren't going to use the rickshaws today. One of them followed us all the way down the road while we walked to our first stop. It was quite intertesting but seemed to be in a bit of a state of disrepair. When we came out of the temple the rickshaw driver was there still waiting, but after we ignored him yet again and started walking he got bored and gave up on us.

Our next stop was the botanical gardens, but it didn't seem that they were particuarly open to the public except for some sort of walk early in the morning, so we carried on to the main road to find another moto to take us to our next destination.

We arrived at Bara Imambara, which I guess was a kind of palace. It was built by the nawabs (kings I think) of Avadh which was the kingdom which was here before the British took power in 1857. It has one of the largest unsupported vaulted halls in the world which was pretty impressive. We then hired a guide who showed us round the labyrinth which was built above the palace. It was pretty cool with lots of corridors and stairways and we felt that we might have got lost if we didn't have someone to show us the way.

We then headed down to the Hussainabad Clocktower which apparently carries the largest clock in India. Next was the Picture Gallery a rather odd musuem which occupied one small room of a larger building and had pictures of all of the Nawabs. We spent about 5 minutes before moving on. Last stop was the Hussainabad Imambara another small palace.

After this the weather was getting very hot and we decided to find a moto to get us back to near our hotel. When we had walked out of our hotel earlier we had seen a shopping centre with a MacDonalds, KFC and Pizza Hut, so we decided to have a break from Indian food and get a pizza! Walking into the restaurant from the bustle of the streets we had just left was like walking into another world. It was fully air conditioned and looked like a very nice western pizza hut. It was completely empty apart from us and I think our waiter thought he was working in a five star hotel with the amount of attention he gave us. It was just what we needed to regain some energy and cool down, Indian streets can be quite tiring!

After lunch we had a look round the shopping centre. Again this felt like we could have been in a western city and felt quite out of place compared to the rest of the city. The strange thing was the amount of security there was, presumably to keep out undesirable people, but there were several guards on the entrance (some with shotguns) and metal detectors.

After lunch we headed back to our hotel and had a bit of a rest before dinner. We had a night train to catch that evening so we had decided to get some rest so we weren't so tired as the last one. We had also paid extra at our hotel so we could check out at 11pm.

So we checked out at 11 and caught the taxi to the station. Got there at about 11:05 so with plenty of time to find our train which was due to arrive at 11:25 and depart at 11:50. Unfortunately it turned out we had even more time as a screen said that our train was going to be 1 hour late! So we found a spot just near the entrance to put down our bags and sat down on them to wait.