Monday 14th March - A Henna Party

R gets up at about 7 in time to meet the bed tea delivery man and we get ours. We tiptoe around for a while until the other occupants wake up and then dismantle the bunk and revert to day seating. It is a bright sunny day on the North Indian plain and we watch the bird life and the passing scenery until breakfast arrives. This is vegetable cutlets, chips and peas with bread and butter. We are short of photo's of this morning so here is one from yesterday of R throwing a sulk on being told that we need to move to a different coach. This morning the MP decides to be chatty and tells us about all of the interesting places in India that we have failed to get to. He also tells us what a beautiful country Scotland is. He must have been asleep when they visited Whitburn.
New Delhi statiuon, where we arrive a mere 10 minutes late, is its usual chaos. We batter the porters down from 500 to 300 which is still a lot more than the locals pay and they take our luggage out to a spot on the pavement next to a dodgy taxi wallah who wants to charge us well over double the rate. We agree on 400 just to get out of the heat. Our cabby, who looks about 15, has to ask directions. It's a good job that we know where we are going. Although it is only 11 a.m they have a room ready for us - just as tiny as last time we were here - but it has a/c and a shower and that is all we want at the moment.
By the time we are refreshed and repacked it has cooled down a little and we head out on the metro to Khan Market, allegedly the trendiest place in Delhi, and therefore just the place for us. In ten minutes we see more westerners than we have seen in the previous four weeks put together. After all of our travels R almost literally trips over a man offering hand painting. After a bit of a haggle a price is agreed for two backs of hands. A second artist appears and they sit on the step leading up to the Citibank ATM and plonk a tiny plastic stool in the middle of the pavement for R. They set too with a will and quite a crowd gathers to watch the entertainment. At the end R is advised to let it dry for an hour then polish with oil. What on earth could we do for an hour? Fortunately there was a trendy bar handy. Unfortunately their Kingfishers were very small so we had to move on to the next bar, not very trendy at all but bigger beers. When we had finished they arrived with a repeat order, apparently because it was Happy Hour. What a shame. By this time R's hands were cured (or whatever the term is) so we headed for the SideWok restaurant so she could oil her hands in the loo and incidentally have some food. This was of the Thai variety, very tasty and in huge portions. Luckily for our livers there was no licence so we drank water.
For a final holiday thrill we took a tuk-tuk ride back to the Ramada Plaza and had a nightcap in the bar.