To Delhi

We leave Jaipur on the 6 am train to Delhi for a 3-4 hour ride. The train leaves right on time and is pretty much on schedule until we reach the stop just before Delhi. The train is delayed by fog so we are an hour late. Not bad when you consider it took 20 hours to travel from Varanasi to Agra. We arrive at the station and our ever-resourceful guide Singh has hired a porter to transport our big bags so we don't have to lug them over the bridge. Thank goodness! We walk through the station and to a minibus ready to take us to our hotel in Delhi, the “Hotel Perfect.” It’s in the middle of a jammed packed street where hardly any parking is available. Delhi is unbelievably crowded with a population of at least 17 million, and is India’s second largest city as well as the nation’s capital. After settling in, we join Singh for an orientation tour of the city. We will take the city’s Metro to our destination in old Delhi. The metro is three years old, very efficient, state of the art and even ISO 14001 certified for environmental compliance. It was first conceived in 1969 and construction began in 1998. It's hard to imagine the gridlock that would exist - not to mention the pollution - if the metro had not been built here. We found it pretty easy to use, with stops called out on each train, but most trains are jammed-packed - but no worries if you don't make your train, the next one will come along in 2-4 minutes. Before you can board, you go through security with separate lines for men and women and metal detectors. Each train has a separate coach for women only, and the police sternly warn the men who violate this rule. We transfer from the blue to the yellow line, then exit the station and catch bicycle rickshaws to take our orientation tour, stopping to take photos at Delhi’s Red Fort and a short tour at Delhi’s big mosque. Then we visit the old market area, with extremely narrow passage ways and all kinds of tasty treats and beautiful clothing. We then take the metro on our own to Connaught Square which is a fairly modern shopping area with all kinds of upscale shops. We stop for coffee, then decide we want to find the India Gate which Hoyt remembered from his 1974 trip. Instead we are diverted by a "friend" (who said he recognized us from the hotel; his brother worked there, right....)to a “no hassle” shopping emporium where we end up buying a marble box, miniature painting and three long shirts for me (on my list to buy). Even though we realize the diversion resulted in a commission for our friend the tuk-tuk driver, we're happy with our purchases - and guess what, the proprietors

were more than willing to bargain. After what we hope is the last shopping event of our trip, we return to the metro stop by our hotel, which is only about two minutes away from where we're staying. However, we exited the station on the wrong side of the street and were disoriented in the dark, so it took about 45 minutes instead! We reached our hotel at 7:25, just five minutes before the start of our farewell dinner. Singh took us to a wonderful continental and Indian restaurant a couple of blocks away where we toasted the culmination of our trip and shared contact information.