Monday 05/01/04

I got up at about ten, and over breakfast, got talking to an Aussie couple who had first visited India in the late seventies. They mentioned how much it had changed since then, with the traffic and pollution all increasing. I caught a rickshaw down to the New Delhi train station to reconfirm my reservations. There was a guy standing on the stairs saying that the office was closed, and that I should go to a travel agent over the road, but this is such an old scam, I just laughed in his face. The office was, of course, open, and my train times were reconfirmed, and only one had changed. afterwards, I took a walk through the main bazaar in Paharganj, and took some photos of the utter madness there. The way that the pedestrians and autorickshaws narrowlly miss each other is amazing! Saw a couple of cows loafing around (first ones!!), and wandered off to have a veg-burger and a cup of tea. Some of the book stalls had a weird and wondeful mixture of subjects, and I bought George Orwells Animal Farm, as I hadn't read it in some time. Took another autorickshaw back to the guesthouse, and I booked a car and driver for the next day so that I could see the highlights of Delhi all in one go.