I woke up at 5:30AM, took a shower and was in the hallway waiting for Liz K and Alexa by 5:50. We left the ship at 6:00 to meet a taxi driver to take us to the airport. We got in the taxi and got the airport about 45 minutes later. Driving in India is crazy. I stopped counting the amount of times we almost crashed. It kind of reminded me of Frogger. The airport itself was very small. All it was, was a huge room like the kind that they used for train station stops in old movies. They even had those red chairs. There was also a prayer room, which I thought was pretty cool.
We had two flights. I was asleep through most of the first one. Between flights we got on a bus just outside of the train and were taken to our next plane. It turns out planes in India are pretty much the same as in the USA… The only differenced that I could tell were that they liked to play a piano only version of Piano Man on repeat and their airplane food is much better. I am not sure what the dish they served us was called, but it was the same thing I had eaten during my village visit the day before. The food was one cake (shaped like a crab cake) that could either be vegitarian or non-vegitarian and a rice cake (which seemed like a really flat pancake. I think I had vegitarian this time, so I think it was mostly potato. You eat it by tearing off a piece of the rice cake and using that part to pick up the fish/veg/ meat cake thing. It was called Fish Mappas.
We thought we were meeting Alexa’s friend Rahul when we got to the airport, but we weren’t sure where to find him so we found a pay phone and called. After a while of trying to figure out what was going on we discovered Rahul couldn’t make it, but had found us a place to stay. He said he would call them and let them know we were coming while we left the airport and headed to the address. When we got there, they said there was no room, so we went to a hotel Alexa had found in a guide book. It took us a while to get to Ginger hotel and when we got there they said they didn’t have any free rooms. That was about when Rahul called and told us he made reservations for us at his friend’s friend’s hotel.
I was starving at this point so we stopped to get a snack before taking another taxi to Hotel Rangoli. The hotel was pretty decent, I thought, but seeing as I have spent a lot of time in hiker hostels in the past it takes a lot for me to think somewhere is really bad. It was basically what I was expecting for a low-cost hotel in Delhi, India.
We ate dinner at the hotel restaurant. I don’t remember the exact names of all of the dishes, but one of them was called Shahi Paneer and that one was my favorite. I forgot that I was supposed to avoid eating dairy while in foreign countries (paneer=cheese), but it was amazing! The only rule I think I was able to keep during my time in India was that I didn’t drink the tap water. I felt completely fine the entire trip, so no worries there.
The rest of the night we spent planning for our trip to the Taj Mahal the next day, taking creeper pictures out the bathroom window, having tea and dessert time, and trying to figure out how the shower worked. I was able to shower pretty quickly, but I still think that shower had too many spouts and knobs on it. I was convinced there was no hot water, which I figured out wasn’t true, but not until we left the hotel a few days later.
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