After a wonderfully long lie-in, Jayne and I decided to ‘brave’ the New Delhi train station to buy our train tickets to Amristar on Sunday. We’d heard of touts being aggressive – telling us the tourist office was shut/burnt down/closed pending a murder investigation(!). We’d also read about the long queues. Fortunately we had none of these!! A queue number and filled in form and 20 minutes later we left with 2 train tickets in our hands for the costly sum of 1570 rupees (about £15 for both). We then decided to take a walk through Old Delhi – a constant barrage of noise, colours and smells! We braved a street vendor for an Indian sandwich – it was actually really nice but I’m sure our stomachs won’t like us later!!!
After that, we continued our stroll towards the Red Fort. Converted by the British into army barracks, it still displays the history and grandeur of Mughal Delhi. We wandered into the Museum on India’s Struggle for Freedom, which used paintings, busts and dioramas to show how horrible the British were!! We then spent time walking around the gardens – Jayne got very excited by the chipmunks and hawks!
From there, we navigated the heaving streets like pros, making our way to Jama Masjid (the biggest Mosque in India). Unfortunately, we were too late to go inside (no women allowed after sunset) but we got to sit on the steps and enjoy watching the madness in the street below from a relatively quiet position! A 16p metro ticket later (for both of us!) brought us back to New Delhi. Back at the hostel we met a French Vet called Mylene who was looking for somewhere good to eat. We headed out together to our new local street restaurant (having been there last night too!!) and gorged on curry for £1.50 each. Off to scrub my feet clean now before heading to bed – plans being made for tomorrow as I write!
Trans Travels 