So somehow I ended up in Calcutta again... Jodhpur was lovely, we did very little except hang out by the pool and sleep. There was a fort with elephant seats in it which was interesting for a morning, and we spent a few hours in the bazaar one afternoon, during which I got headbutted by a cow (not funny, just painful, I have a bruise on my forearm although Richard could barely stand up he was laughing so hard, and it was TOTALLY unprovoked, I was about a metre away and the cow just went for me) but in general the luxurious life of having a swimming pool for less than a tenner each per night was too tempting to stray from. By Saturday however it was time to do something reckless and irresponsible, so we got last minute train tickets to Delhi. We shared the carriage with an American family, perfectly nice but with a daughter with the most whiny high pitched voice EVER who screeched down her 'cell phone' at every opportunity ( i.e. 5 in the morning). She was lucky to survive. Consequently I didn't sleep, and in our drowiness we missed our stop and ended up in Old Delhi, about an hours drive from the airport with a flight we had considered trying to get on leaving in half an hour. At the station we found a taxi driver and negotiated a price, but on the way to the cab suddenly this other cab driver runs up to him and starts pushing him. Pretty soon a fight is underway, and the other guy then picks up a BRICK and goes to chuck it at our driver!!! We ran away to another cab, but the guy we fixed a price with was trying to follow us to persuade us to get in his cab after all, so the guy with the brick is following him, and this is all taking place at 8.30 on a Sunday morning... Crazy...
We got to the airport and paid an extra 20 pounds each for a flight which left in 6 hours instead of 12, called my friends in Calcutta from last year and came over here. Even more impressive though, I managed to sleep on a plastic airport chair for 4 hours solidly curled up in a little ball! Talented lady huh. The plane was like a flying cattle truck, I'm not sure if Europe have laws about leg room on low cost budget airlines, but India certainly don't. At one point the guy in front of me put his chair back at one stage and I had about 3 inches space in which I could move my face forward and back without headbutting the guy in front (he had very greasy hair so it wouldnt have been very nice if i had have done). We arrived in Calcutta with no hotel organised and my friend Raja who picked us up at the airport drove us around for hours trying to sort one. There is no mid price accomodation here, only very rich business travellers or spend nothing backpackers typically frequent cal and although Richard and I brought mozi nets and sleeping bag liners with the intention of staying low budget when we first arrived, we have changed our minds and become very high maintenance travellers over the past month (a/c, 4 poster beds and a pool don't you know!!). We saw a suite in one hotel that smelt horrid and had bugs crawling all over it, literally you could see loads of little black things jumping and running and crawling, was very gross. The other one had two massive cockroaches at the bottom of the stairs on your way up to the room... Finally we paid a little extra and stayed in a nicer hotel but our room was next to the kitchen on the ground floor, and the curtain was see through, so all night with the lights off we could see loads of kitchen staff outside our room, and they were talking at the top of their voices all night. When the lights in our room went on they could see US!
Some friends in the fellowship own serviced apartments so we moved into one of those instead yesterday and went to a meeting. It was lovely, I recognised quite a lot of people there and they were just as kind and welcoming as last year. They have organised an itinerary for the rest of our time here for us (!) so we should have a great few days here. I have missed the city lots and it is lovely to be back. I managed to get ill at dinner on our first night here (with the see through curtains) and had a horrid night with being sick, stomach cramps, feverish and the works. Having given Richard lots of self satisfied lectures on the importance of hygiene and care around all food and drink in india, I think he was secretly pleased that I had some suffering of my own, but it soon passed so I can be judgemental again now!!
Anyway only a few days left, and again I wish I could stay longer, although then I would miss my birthday which is NEXT WEEK (August 30) and I wouldn't be able to pick up all those lovely gifts you are in the process of picking out at the moment, which would be unfair on all of you and on me...
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