We arrived in New Delhi late in the afternoon on Monday 17 September. We had found the area that we had stayed in before to be pretty convenient, so we headed back there and, after a bit of walking and asking around, found a reasonable place to stay. We had a quick shower and then went down to the street to get something to eat. We were hoping for an early night so didn't hang around too long, and soon were back in the room where we spent the rest of the evening checking on all our forms for our trip to the German Consulate the next day :-/

Tuesday was the day of our Schengen Visa interview (we needed to apply for it in India because they won't give it to you more than three months in advance - bit of a pain really.) We were up early to finish packing and after a surprisingly good breakfast at a tiny roadside cafe, we left our bags at reception and walked to the end of the street to the bus stop. Even with having to make a connection, our experience of the public bus system was pretty good, and soon we were waiting outside the consulate. Once security had graciously allowed us to bring in our cheap pocket calculator (we were almost turned away - seriously) the rest of the interview went fairly smoothly. With the interview over, we eventually managed to find another bus back to the hotel where we collected our bags and, since it was now bucketing down, got a rickshaw down to the railway station. We didn't have long to wait before our train arrived - a new "double-decker express" that had been in operation for not even two weeks, the inside was still clean and nothing was broken! We climbed aboard and settled in for what would be a quite pleasant five hour trip to Jaipur!