ideas for cheap stuff

First a bit bour our city tour of Dehli cos we never got round to adding that in. It was good enough, there’s tonnes to see. I found it nuts that in a huge city with so much noise that in places like Humanyun’s Tomb you could hardly here a thing. Wouldn’t do more than a day tour though. Our driver, though nice, had the ability to wreck your head at 15 paces and really its not worth the risk. We’ll find better ways to do tours but we really have to become more specific and write down exactly what you want to do in a day and what’s feasible cos we ended up missing the Red Fort, which we really wanted to do cos our driver brought us to a shop, even though we’d told him we didn’t want to go to one. We got our own back and kept him out till 21:30 so we could see the Sound and Light Show at the Red Fort. Bit drawn out but we got to see a bit of the fort, learned a bit more bout the Moghul kingdom and it did look pretty.

Well in the where in the world stakes Lids and I have escaped Del Boy Dehli to Jaipur which is in Rajistan. Pretty kool place but getting outta Dehli was no mean feat. We were getting a bit sick of the sight of each other and our inability to make meaningful, or even remote contact with randomers in a city of 13 million people, not counting the tourists, was getting to us so we made a split second decision on Saturday night after the disappointment of not being able to find single place to watch Ireland match (I’m sure Dee will be kind enough to keep us updated this evening) to escape Del Boy Dehli. at first on the Saturday night Lids thought I was being a bit hasty but the more we thought of it the more we needed to go. And what a morning on Sunday we had. We got up at 08:00 after a very few hours sleep and hopped an auto-rickshaw to Shardaryung Airport to Indian Airlines cos you just cannot buy tickets online, I really appreciate the Aer Lingus booking system now. Anyway, we’ve finally figured out how to get negotiate with people in the service sector here. We decide price before we go out, if we’re not sure what something should cost then we ask for price and then offer just over half. We still get ripped off as foreigners but we have a duty to future travellers to try show that its not ok to rip us off cos we don’t get it. Course this happens a lot in Ireland too but at least if a tourist asks someone in a tourist office or even randomly on the street they’ll get an honest answer. So cut a deal out to the office and the guy tried to kick us out by these army officers, obviously not where we wanted to be. An interesting thing about Dehli heads is that most of them don’t seem to look around themselves. The army guys had no idea where the Indian Airlines office was but we finally gave them the full address and they figured out that it was on the same street 2 buildings down!? The auto-rickshaw guy brought us back down and wanted another 40 rupees for waiting 2 mins! He didn’t get it. I’m sorry we told him where we wanted to go and he said he knew so bugger that. Anyway got into the office and went to the International ticket purchasing area. There was no one there and this Indian lady came over and asked what we wanted to buy. I looked at the sign and back at her. When I said we wanted to buy tickets from Kolkatta to Bangkok she looked at me like I’d 10 heads. Finally grasping the principle we sat down at a desk and got our tickets. Took ages.

Then for a bit of adventure we took our first bus journey. Indian buses are a right of passage in themselves. We’ve discovered that you have to be very specific about where you want to go exactly cos if you say New Dehli Railway Station or Connaught Place you could be left 10 mins walk from the place you have to say which side of the station and on what circle of CP. Anyway all the buses in Dehli prive and competing with each other as they get paid for getting more passangers. This has both the amusing and exhilarating effect of men with sticks shouting out of buses the places they pause (not stop) at people and man-handling and herding people on to buses. There’s usually a bus driver, ticket conductor, 2 herders and a guy on the look-out for gaps in traffic, on pathways, on the opposite side of the road etc to get past other buses and race to the next stop to get the most passengers. Course we got stared out of it cos it must be unusual for 2 pale, red blotched, sweaty girls to be on the bus and be amused by the whole set up. The buses, auto-rickshaws, rickshaws, taxis etc all have Schumachers at the helms. Traffic is just like a big bumper car set up. Its just its a lot more krazy when you’re on a bus, its bloody big compared to everything else and you think other vehicles and people would be wary of them, but no, they just walk, drive in as close as possible and shoot in front. Nuts altogether, but very good fun.

Anyway we had to walk for 10 minutes to get to the right side of New Dehli Railway Station to buy our tickets. We finally found the right place and filled in some more forms. We wanted to see the Taj Mahal so we went up to buy our tickets to Agra for Monday morning and then to go on to Jaipur and then from there to Varanasi on Thursday to meet up with my mate Tongie. Sure your man took one look at us and was like, right I’ll just sort these 2 out cos they’ve obviously no clue what they’re at. We’re good at travelling, just the organisation of us stinks. Anyway he told us we were muppets to be doing Agra first as we’d be going back through it from Jaipur so we decided on Jaipur first, then one day in Agra (that’s all ya need so we’ve heard) and then on to Varansai. The best thing about all this was that we could leave that night. One disappointment is that we didn’t think to organise to go to Puskar instead cos the Camel Fair is on there at the moment but sure we’ve still had the best and most enlightening time since being in Jaipur, breaking little hearts and all that jazz. Lids has more on that.

Hung out relaxing in Dehli, went to a Guru temple. Ate some more grub, entered the worst toilet we have so far been unlucky enough to use and experienced our first wait at the railway station. All this waiting around gives us time to sort out what it is we actually want to do next and where we can get our next load of toilet roll.

Train itself was another experience. This Italian guy who was heading to Puskar, (really would’ve loving to fit that in) and he got us organised on the train. These Indian guys were chatting to us for a while trying to read what we were writing over our shoulders and such lark and we were checking out the shanty towns along the railway line. Its just mad that there’s so many people in such small areas. They’re not places that any persons should have to live in but the people made them homes with lights and such. What was interesting was that so many of them have TV’s and satelite dishes or have one outside between maybe 10 or so families.

Tidbits:
Advertising in Dehli did crack us up as well. There was one particularly great one for blood donations, “Tough guys donate blood” and “Smart women donate blood”. Almost everything is sponsored by companies. Bottled water is produced by Pepsi and Coca-Cola and the pictures in the adverts themselves look western. They adapt movie posters, there’s very little advertising on posters with Indians in traditional garb. Now guys in India mostly wear western style clothes, but women mostly wear sari, salwar kameez etc. Its just interesting. The people view us as very wealthy altogether, which is a bit uncomfortable at times but you gotta be open to it all don’t ya!