After a rather disturbed night,
we had breakfast early and checked out of the hotel.
Our Kuoni guide was waiting for us at the appointed
time and gave us a large folder of information containing
our detailed itinerary and tickets for the various
train journeys ahead. We were then taken to our chaffeur-driven
car and started our Delhi city tour. Our driver was
excellent and we quickly got used to the hair-raising
traffic once again. It all seems to work after a fashion,
we concluded.
Our first stop was in old
Delhi, where we visited the mosque
Above: Our city guide Bharat, outside the mosque
Our second stop was at the
war memorial (above)
India's parliament buildings
in New Delhi (above) and
presidential palace, Rashtrapati Bhavan (below)
Our next stop was at the
Mahatma Gandhi memorial
Another stop, where we strolled
through the Lodhi Garden
Although our half day city
tour had officially ended, we still had some time before
we were expected to board our train, so our guide, Bharat
took us to a few extra places, including the one below,
which was on the same site as a large reservoir and was
perched high up to one side of the reservoir. Being a free-entrance
site, there were a number of young Indians meeting their
friends and chatting.
Leaving the site of the
reservoir, we were taken to a large carpet shop. How nice,
we thought, our guide wants us to experience everything
that Delhi has to offer and is even prepared to indulge
us by letting us buy things. Wrong! Shopping was to become
a somewhat unwelcome and routine aspect of every day, whether
or not we wanted to partake of it... and there was no getting
out of it!
Our last visit was to a
Sikh temple. Outside, we encountered our first cow meandering
through the traffic
