Migrating South
Today it was time to say goodbye to Rajasthan. We've seen and learned a lot here, some of the key skills I've picked up include:
- Showering with my mouth shut (almost as hard as cycling with my mouth shut it turns out)
- Squatting for the toilets (although all other muscles have wasted away I must have thighs of steel!)
- Plaiting my hair reasonably well without a mirror (arms still ache though)
- Speaking a little Hindi: "Chalo" - let's go, "Namaste" - hello, goodbye, have a nice day, go away, "Loco" - stop (a bit hard to get my head around speaking only languages with a Latin origin...)
- Eating bananas with bits of brown on the skin and no "greenness" whatsoever!
Some things still baffle me though, such as the pebbles in the sinks, humps on the cows, positive discrimination (women-only carriages!) on the metro and consistent appearance of a bucket and a jug in every shower....
A leisurely morning was spend wondering around Lodhi Gardens, a recommendation from a friend which excited my expectations as they were very pretty. People were actually exercising for fun in them too which is the first I've seen of that this trip. Our walk may have been a bit too leisurely actually as we got back to the hotel later than I'd hoped. A quick check out and we were soon on the metro, changing lines twice to reach the airport an hour and a half or so before our flight took off. Plenty of time, yes, but Delhi is a big airport with long queues, and with my past history of missing flights there my heart rate was certainly up a little on the "8 minute cum 21 minute" orange line ride.
We grabbed some fairly fast food for lunch, which consisted of vegetarian KFC. An odd choice perhaps but their were waiting times on the other outlets. I quite enjoyed my "veg zinger box" (including mayo, a hash brown and a chocolate brownie) but it was so incredibly spicy it had me in tears. Ironically the spiciest thing I have eaten over here to date as generally the food has been much milder than I thought.
By the time we got to the gate most people had boarded, so we hopped on our Vistara flight, which was very punctual, yay! A slight error in forethought perhaps was that a small meal was provided (I was quite full from my zinger box) but I managed to eat it anyway, which I was grateful for later as dinner consisted only of a very tasty chocolate muffin and three (mini!) bananas.
My first impression of Kerala when landing was how pleasantly green it looked. This was soon followed by the tropical wave of heat as we stepped off the plane, thirty degrees and muggy was certainly a contrast to Delhi's chilly evenings. We covered the 50km from the airport to Fort Cochin on a slow but steady public bus, the sunset soon turning into glamorous lights on inviting malls, shops and hotels, with the people milling around looking like they had purpose and the capability for fun, again, different to the Delhi we knew.
Today it was time to say goodbye to Rajasthan. We've seen and learned a lot here, some of the key skills I've picked up include:
- Showering with my mouth shut (almost as hard as cycling with my mouth shut it turns out)
- Squatting for the toilets (although all other muscles have wasted away I must have thighs of steel!)
- Plaiting my hair reasonably well without a mirror (arms still ache though)
- Speaking a little Hindi: "Chalo" - let's go, "Namaste" - hello, goodbye, have a nice day, go away, "Loco" - stop (a bit hard to get my head around speaking only languages with a Latin origin...)
- Eating bananas with bits of brown on the skin and no "greenness" whatsoever!
Some things still baffle me though, such as the pebbles in the sinks, humps on the cows, positive discrimination (women-only carriages!) on the metro and consistent appearance of a bucket and a jug in every shower....
A leisurely morning was spend wondering around Lodhi Gardens, a recommendation from a friend which excited my expectations as they were very pretty. People were actually exercising for fun in them too which is the first I've seen of that this trip. Our walk may have been a bit too leisurely actually as we got back to the hotel later than I'd hoped. A quick check out and we were soon on the metro, changing lines twice to reach the airport an hour and a half or so before our flight took off. Plenty of time, yes, but Delhi is a big airport with long queues, and with my past history of missing flights there my heart rate was certainly up a little on the "8 minute cum 21 minute" orange line ride.
We grabbed some fairly fast food for lunch, which consisted of vegetarian KFC. An odd choice perhaps but their were waiting times on the other outlets. I quite enjoyed my "veg zinger box" (including mayo, a hash brown and a chocolate brownie) but it was so incredibly spicy it had me in tears. Ironically the spiciest thing I have eaten over here to date as generally the food has been much milder than I thought.
By the time we got to the gate most people had boarded, so we hopped on our Vistara flight, which was very punctual, yay! A slight error in forethought perhaps was that a small meal was provided (I was quite full from my zinger box) but I managed to eat it anyway, which I was grateful for later as dinner consisted only of a very tasty chocolate muffin and three (mini!) bananas.
My first impression of Kerala when landing was how pleasantly green it looked. This was soon followed by the tropical wave of heat as we stepped off the plane, thirty degrees and muggy was certainly a contrast to Delhi's chilly evenings. We covered the 50km from the airport to Fort Cochin on a slow but steady public bus, the sunset soon turning into glamorous lights on inviting malls, shops and hotels, with the people milling around looking like they had purpose and the capability for fun, again, different to the Delhi we knew.
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