2 July - India - Delhi

We are staying in the La Lit hotel & over the last few days have met various staff members from the General Manger to the housekeepers. The service & concern when I was ill with a car & driver to take R to pharmacy for medication, the lovely gift brought to the room & then the pleasant comments when I reappeared for meals was outstanding. The hotel is lovely but it is the well trained pleasant staff who speak excellent English & go the extra mile that really make it.

As we feel better today we tackle taking the metro to the Bahá'í faith temple. It's about 45 mins away. The metro is a revelation-clean, modern air conditioned & efficient. It's very crowded so its elbows out & move with the crowd. One of the interesting features on the platforms where there are signs both overhead & painted on the platform for women only carriages. They are well patronised & apparently come into being since the bus rape case. The people here are embarrassed & ashamed about it. Of course I & other women were able to travel in the other carriages as well. It's not a segregation thing but a safety thing.

The temple is built in the shape of a lotus & very beautiful. We were allowed to enter in quiet meditation......a very interesting & restful place to visit. We spent quite a bit of time there really enjoying the freedom that travelling on your own brings. A curious phenomenon that we have noticed before but it was with the younger girls on the group is the habit of local groups of usually women clustering around having photos taken with you. It's either done surreptitiously where they 'pretend to be in the way' or most likely they appear & stand next to you. If you appear willing & smile then more photos are taken. I asked our last guide why - he said a lot of the tourists (Indian ) have not seen white faces before & want to show off... It's the off season here because of the heat and there are very very few white faces to be seen so maybe ??

After the temple it's back on the metro to Chandi Chowk which is in Old Delhi & a shoppers dream. R wanted some medications & here you just walk in & ask for what you want no problem ....... No fussing with Doctor visits or prescriptions ....... How many Sir? is what you are asked & as long as you can pay you are good to go.

We also got sidetracked into a saree shop & were absolutely enthralled with watching a bride to be being shown then draped with the most amazingly coloured & embellished fabrics ...... So carried away that we walked out with a saree as well!!!!! The brides Mum & probably sister just sat in front of piles & piles of different options either liking or discarding with an imperious wave of the hand.

Caught the rush hour metro back to the hotel :)