Our Last Full Day in India

We had an early morning today, as we had to get up at 4:45am in order to check out of the hotel and catch our 7am train. We had done some laundry in our room the night before, and when we awoke, some of the clothes were still a bit damp. Erin used her blow-dryer to help facilitate drying the clothes before having to pack them up, but it was only moderately helpful.  To our dismay, by the time we left the hotel, we had to pack up our "almost dry" clothes into our backpacks one more time.

We took another large open-topped jeep to get back to the train station. Once there, we found our platform and had about 30 minutes before our train arrived. During the downtime, our tour guide Bhupendra agreed to say hello to everyone in Hindi:

Some of the porters balanced the luggage more-or-less gracefully on their heads at the train station.

Right on time, our train, the Janshatabadi Express, arrived and there was a flurry of activity as everyone tried to board as quickly as possible. Somehow, a few members of our group (James included) boarded the wrong car of the train. Erin was looking for James but couldn't find him and was worried. Eventually, everyone made it to the right spot.  Once again, our seats weren't next to each other.

The train ride was about 6 hours long as we headed north towards Delhi. James read his Kindle for most of the trip, while Erin did some work on the computer.  We had gotten brown-bag breakfasts from our hotel before we left for the train station, so we were able to eat something along the way. The breakfasts included a banana, a tangerine, stuffed paratha (one of the common Indian potato breads), and white bread with tomatoes on it.

We arrived at the train station in Delhi around 12:30pm, as expected. When we left the train, we followed our tour guide Bhupendra out of the station and towards the taxis. Bhupendra began trying to negotiate the taxi price with the drivers and within a minute or two, the discussion between the men became very heated. Bhupendra was obviously upset and was yelling in Hindi. He walked over to the long pre-paid police taxi line and waited for a minute before being wooed back by the unlicensed taxi drivers. Soon, they had negotiated a price and we were loading our stuff into an unlicensed taxi. Bhupendra later informed us that the taxi drivers had tripled the price of the taxis when they saw we were westerners. He said he had to argue with them that all of us were with him and he understands how the system works and that he wouldn't budge on the price. (We were thankful for that!)

As we rode in the taxi, we were extremely grateful to see signs of civilization again. Delhi is large city – it has paved roads, some big buildings, and shopping. When we originally arrived in Delhi two weeks ago, it seemed a bit dirty and worn down. However, after spending a great deal of time traveling through smaller areas in India, we thought Delhi looked pretty amazing!

We returned to the Good Times Hotel soon after and we waited about 30 minutes or so in order to check in. Some of the rooms hadn't been cleaned yet, so we patiently sat in the lobby until ours was available. Several of the members in our tour group had voiced a desire to eat at McDonald's for lunch as they were tired of Indian food. Because we were finally in a bigger city, we actually had access to a McDonald's. We were surprised by how inexpensive the meals were, and we took advantage of the low cost by eating our fair share.

There is nothing like a McDonald's sandwich in India!  Even though they did not have any beef on the menu, we were delighted to eat some non-Indian food for the day.

Although we did not indulge, we certainly considered buying a cone because it was so inexpensive.  (10 Rupies is about 5 cents!)

After our lunch at McDonald's, our tour guide offered to take us through some of the local markets. We happily agreed, and walked around for about 2 hours looking at all of the different low-cost merchandise. Erin wanted to stop at a pharmacy to purchase some additional headache medicine, so Bhupendra sent us to a “reliable” pharmacy that was inside one of the hospitals.

This child walked alongside James for quite some time trying to convince him to get his shoes shined.  James was wearing sport sandals and politely declined (several times) before the boy finally moved on.

Does this look safe to you?  We did not wander over to the mobile plaza, but thought it was an interesting sight.

A small band was gathering in the street - and Erin liked their uniforms!

We continued to shop for a bit longer, stopping at several street venders as well as inside an actual clothing store. Erin wanted to look at some of the colorful women's clothing and scarves, while James was on the hunt for some handkerchiefs and a scarf. James used his bargaining skills in order to get a good price on the scarf, but was unable to get the price he wanted for the handkerchiefs, so eventually he just gave up.

After we finished shopping, we met up with the rest of our group members for our final dinner together. We went to a big Indian restaurant that was filled with other tourists and locals. Over the past 2 weeks, we have become much more familiar with Indian foods. It was actually fun to look at a menu and have an idea what each item was!  We enjoyed our delicious and very filling dinners, as well as conversing with the rest of our group members before saying our final goodbyes, parting ways, and heading back to the hotel.

James's dinner consisted of Indian naan bread and chicken tikka masala.

Today was a college football gameday back in the states, and we were both eager to try to find out how our teams had done. Because of the 11.5 hour time change, following the games was a bit difficult. We checked out the scores online in the 1st quarter, but we were too tired to stay up any later and went to bed, hoping our teams would end up winning.