Surprise trip to Delhi...
Not really sure where this "day" starts and ends", but I guess for me it was with my office Christmas party. After remembering to set my out-of-office reply (for a whole month) and opening my secret santa present (body glide, excellent) we headed off to Malmaison. One slow but decent Christmas dinner later and I was off to the airport, feeling a tad tipsy....
We checked in and realised our flight was delayed a little. Then a little more. By the time we landed it was delayed by 2hrs! This gave us just over an hour for our connection to Kathmandu - which may have been ok had our bags been going straight through. Unfortunately though, as we had to get our visas validated, fingerprints taken and wait for enough baggage to be taken off the conveyor for the silly sensor system to let ours out!
Thankfully we had booked both flights with the same airline, so Air India put us up in a nearby (fairly nice) hotel, and included lunch, dinner and transport. A bit of faff later and we were eating lunch at the hotel, a tasty combination of Paneer Tikka Masala, Padi Karoo (some dumpling thing with a yellow sauce), Roti and Awizcha Parantha.
Determined to utilise our unexpected time in Delhi, we then soon set off towards Qutub Minar - a collection of temples, tombs and pillars. Unhappy with the price quoted to us for a car by the hotel (1000 Rps!) we went it alone and found an auto-rickshaw. Priced agreed, we were soon bumbling along the road with our driver. Delhi itself is reasonably noisy, smelly, dirty and busy. However, none of these things were to the extent we had expected from anecdotes from others, and certainly no worse than places we have been previously, such as Thailand or Vietnam. It was interesting, if chilly, to taken in the atmosphere, which included a number of pedal cycles with huge loads (and double top bars for some reason), motorbikes aplenty and a mix of buses and taxis competing for priority.
A fair bit of traffic dodging later we arrived, bought our entry tokens (30 Rps for locals, 500 for foreign tourists...), hired a guide and entered. They key tower was slightly hidden as we approached, and we were treated to some interesting stories about the surrounding buildings, some of which were replicas. The tower itself served a purpose as a sundial, with some pleasing geometrical characteristics (by design) such as 24 external columns, and 365 original stairs.
Our journey back was punctuated temporarily by a trip to the local market, which we could have avoided but didn't really mind as we didn't have any real time pressures. Once at the hotel we had another really delicious meal, with a black lentil and bean dhal, as well as another Paneer curry and the best naan I have eaten to date.
Well fed and watered I was surprised at how tired I felt, and I had no problem falling asleep at 21.00, despite the fact this was just 15:30 back home...
Not really sure where this "day" starts and ends", but I guess for me it was with my office Christmas party. After remembering to set my out-of-office reply (for a whole month) and opening my secret santa present (body glide, excellent) we headed off to Malmaison. One slow but decent Christmas dinner later and I was off to the airport, feeling a tad tipsy....
We checked in and realised our flight was delayed a little. Then a little more. By the time we landed it was delayed by 2hrs! This gave us just over an hour for our connection to Kathmandu - which may have been ok had our bags been going straight through. Unfortunately though, as we had to get our visas validated, fingerprints taken and wait for enough baggage to be taken off the conveyor for the silly sensor system to let ours out!
Thankfully we had booked both flights with the same airline, so Air India put us up in a nearby (fairly nice) hotel, and included lunch, dinner and transport. A bit of faff later and we were eating lunch at the hotel, a tasty combination of Paneer Tikka Masala, Padi Karoo (some dumpling thing with a yellow sauce), Roti and Awizcha Parantha.
Determined to utilise our unexpected time in Delhi, we then soon set off towards Qutub Minar - a collection of temples, tombs and pillars. Unhappy with the price quoted to us for a car by the hotel (1000 Rps!) we went it alone and found an auto-rickshaw. Priced agreed, we were soon bumbling along the road with our driver. Delhi itself is reasonably noisy, smelly, dirty and busy. However, none of these things were to the extent we had expected from anecdotes from others, and certainly no worse than places we have been previously, such as Thailand or Vietnam. It was interesting, if chilly, to taken in the atmosphere, which included a number of pedal cycles with huge loads (and double top bars for some reason), motorbikes aplenty and a mix of buses and taxis competing for priority.
A fair bit of traffic dodging later we arrived, bought our entry tokens (30 Rps for locals, 500 for foreign tourists...), hired a guide and entered. They key tower was slightly hidden as we approached, and we were treated to some interesting stories about the surrounding buildings, some of which were replicas. The tower itself served a purpose as a sundial, with some pleasing geometrical characteristics (by design) such as 24 external columns, and 365 original stairs.
Our journey back was punctuated temporarily by a trip to the local market, which we could have avoided but didn't really mind as we didn't have any real time pressures. Once at the hotel we had another really delicious meal, with a black lentil and bean dhal, as well as another Paneer curry and the best naan I have eaten to date.
Well fed and watered I was surprised at how tired I felt, and I had no problem falling asleep at 21.00, despite the fact this was just 15:30 back home...
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