How lucky are we? This is hard to believe but it is absolutely true.
We set out this morning to buy camera number 3. [We sent our old camera for repair in the Uk but, as it hadn't arrived back the day we were due to leave, we went and bought camera number 2. Whilst Dave was setting camera number 2 up, camera number 1 was delivered by courier, these were the two cameras I inadvertently left behind!] Resenting the fact we had 2 cameras at home but would have to spend more money on a camera here in India we were further astonished that they are more expensive here than in the Uk and no amount of haggling would bring the prices down. A lady of Indian descent whom we later learned has spent many years in the U.S. approached us and, when she saw our reluctance to part with our cash, told us she had a spare camera back at her hotel we could borrow and we could post it back to her on our return to the U.K. Can you believe someone would do that? 'Bala' proper took us under her wing, gave us a bottle of water, her newspaper and her phone number should we need any help whilst we are in India. We were overwhelmed by her kindness and generosity to two complete strangers but we are now the proud borrowers of a fab little camera; thankyou so much Bala, we just have to get our heads around the settings with no users manual so look out for our photos.
We found a nice clean looking restaurant and had lunch. I chose a thali, which is a platter of 10 small dishes, a bowl of rice and a flattish naan looking bread. Dave chose dosas [pancakes made with rice and lentils with bowls of savoury dishes. When our meals arrived, served on bananas leaves, neither of us had any idea how to eat it. We set about it rather clumsily until a family on the next table put us straight [Everybody speaks to each other here, unlike the British custom of pretty much keeping ourselves to ourselves] We declined the Indian custom of eating with our fingers as we couldn't remember where they had been and made the most of eating our delicious food with a fork.
We wandered along taking in the sights until we found a park, we had to go through a security check as we went in and were told very sternly 'No smoking, no photograps; how strange! We then went and booked a 15 day guided tour to Rajasthan. We originally intended to organise everything ourselves but the internet is so rare and unreliable here and trains so unpredictable [you are put on a waiting list for tickets] we didn't want to waste time and get stressed out hanging around. It was whilst booking our tour that we realised we had even less funds in our account than we thought so we then spent a stressful couple of hours, with the internet crashing every 5 minutes, on a reversal of roles to get our poor student of a daughter to put some money into our account for us. [She knows what it's like now to be on the other end of a calamity]
Back at our room we feasted on a pasta mug shot each and went to bed. In the middle of the night Dave's Delhi belly started and he was as sick as a pig [I can't believe how much the average human stomach can hold, well, maybe you can't call Dave's stomach average ha ha] He was up twice more in the night and the poor guy is so poorly we have had to cancel our City tour of Delhi today, hence why I am whiling away the time writing this rather long and tedious blog. Oh and guess what? He blamed the pasta mug shot for his Delhi belly! [The dioralyte Laura bought us for Christmas has come in handy, good thinking Laura x]
We are being picked up at 4 today to start our tour; an overnight trip on a sleeper train [9 to a carriage] will be our first adventure, let's hope our tums will be up to the trip, we will not want to be spending much time in the trains toilets if the stories we have heard are anything to go by.