Darjeeling to Delhi, the end of our Indian trip!
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New Delhi,
India
Tuesday, June 8, 2004
Tonight we leave India exactly seven weeks after arriving in Mumbai. We are heading for Beijing and on top of my agenda is the infamous Beijing Duck!
We have seen a lot in India but truth be told I think you would actually need closer to six months in order this country comfortably. There is simply so much to see and secondly it is actually fairly difficult to travel around the place.
As you know from the photographs we survived the 52 hour train journey from Chennai to Darjeeling. What can I say about Darjeeling it is a fantastic place. The views where simply stunning. I am sure you got to look at the pictures. A lot of them where taken from our four Euro a night bedroom window. It was absolutely unbelievable.
On the various day trips we took the drivers all had the amazing ability to keep their passengers quiet. I would personally describe each trip as similar to a three hour ride on space mountain at Euro Disney. And I do not have the ability to scream for three hours:) The roads where just gravel covered and the unprotected edges where sheer drops of a few thousand feet. Each time the jeep headed for the edge of the road and a two thousand feet drop the driver just swings at the last possible moment (to get round the next hairpin)and thus avoids imminent death for all of us a few more moments. To make you feel even safer most of them smoked at the same time as steering and changing gears. Very talented blokes!
Darjeeling tea. I would write about it but alas as a man who would drink any tea could simply not do it justice. The only person qualified to write this is Roisin.
- Darjeeling tea, absolutely fantastic, I must have drank about 20 cups a day, I am still feeling a bit wired from it. Definitely worth it though , roisin -
I do have to tell you about the place we stayed in Dajeeling. It was run by an ex Ghurka who Roisin described as a teddy bear of a man. This guy was from a different planet. He kept telling us what beautiful intelligent people we where and how nice it was to have guests like us (he really had no idea about me :)). He insisted on us calling him Uncle. He was also really impressed that we didn't drink much during our stay there and heaped praise on us for being so wise. We where trying to work the guy out and the only thing that we could think off which could be the cause of the behavior was that the guy was eating a lot of beetle nut. This is a nut eaten by lots of Indians that allegedly has similar affect to dope. Anyway when on our last night we went out drinking but we felt too guilty, so we ended up having no more than two drinks as we felt we would have let uncle down by this shameful behavior.
Martin
From Darjeeling we headed straight to Delhi and were pleasantly surprised by this city!
It was not the over crowded, polluted, beggar invested oven we had expected. We choose to stay in New Delhi in Conaught Place, which is fairly modern and westernized. So we headed straight for McDonalds for our tea. Another good thing we found here, a few bars that had happy hours, so drink was not in short supply as it is in other parts of the country. Naturally we visited a few such establishments (in the interest of research), and we even thought we found a Karoke bar , but alas when we got there , we were told that Karoke has been banned by the government (did they know i was coming??).
Another interesting fact we discovered is the average Indian only drinks about 1 litre of alcohol per year!!!
For the last few days we have been super tourists and visited many of the fantastic sights around Delhi. There are a number of Forts and Temples around the city, which we visited on Sunday. We had the maddest guide, who seemed more interested in showing us Junkies on the side of the street, and lecturing us on how drugs were a waste of life, rather than telling us about the Red Fort and its significance.
Yesterday we went to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort. All I can really say is these were amazing, definitely the most impressive things I have ever seen. We took lots of pictures, Martin was like a Japanese tourist for the day! So hopefully we will get to down load these shortly and you can see for yourselves.
So now we are in our few hours in India - so I think it's time to hit the shops and market stalls to get rid of all our rupees.
Our next update will be from Beijing - so bye for now,
Roisin
