Delhi

Date arrived: 12th March 2024

Date Departed: 13th March 2024

Favourite sight: Jantar Mantar

Average Cost: £38.35 PPPD

Delhi is the world's second most populous city, and one of the world's most polluted. On our third time of passing through India's capital on this trip, we actually got to spend a few hours and a night in the city. Our last night in India!

12th March 2024

Both of us managed a reasonable nights sleep on our 3rd overnight rail journey in India, and woke with our alarms to find the train just about to arrive into the massive Old Delhi railway terminus, just before 6AM. After disembarking, we wandered into a second class waiting room where we bought some terrible coffee, before braving the gaggle of tuk-tuk drivers outside the front of the sation.

We'd arranged accommodation at a small but moderately nice hotel in Connaught Place, which is quite central in New Delhi, and well located both for the City's underground, and for some of the shopping districts. Once again, thanks owed to the Hotels.com free nights scheme, which allowed us to get a reasonable hotel somewhere close to our budget - something that would otherwise have been a challenge in the capital!

The lovely team at the Palace Heights hotel were happy to welcome us at 7:30am, and we were there in time to get some breakfast in the Hotel's restaurant.  The coffee here was rather better than at the station waiting room! To our extreme surprise, after breakfast we were told our room was available (5 1/2 hours ahead of check-in time) which blissfully allowed us to have a shower and a bit of a top-up snooze, before heading out into Delhi.

Connaught Place is centred around a large circular garden, with radial and circular roads spreading out from it. The garden was fascinating, with a good cross section of people enjoying it. The buildings on Rajiv Chowk - the innermost road around Connaught Place  itself - are largely upscale restaurants and shops, so we avoided them, instead making for the co-operative stores gathered together on Sansad Marg.

There seem to be stores representing craftsmen from various different states of India, and we chose to explore some of the the stores representing the states that we had visited on our journey. We were moderately successful and managed to find all of the souvenirs and gifts that we wanted to take home by lunchtime, so rewarded ourselves witha bite to eat. With a few hours in Delhi still, we headed for the Jantar Mantar - a fantastic array of stone built astronomical instruments, created in the early 18th century by Mahorajah Jai Singh II, of Jaipur.

Views of various instruments from the Jantar Mantar in Delhi. The scholarly Mahorajah Jai Sing II built five such observatories across much of Northern India, from Jaipur to Varanasi

Whilst the instruments themselves were fabulous, they also brought a slight respite from the busy-ness of Delhi's streets - which even now, 199 days into our trip and after 131 days in India - could still be hard work at times!

We returned to our hotal at a leisurely pace, doing a little bit of packing, before deciding to have aour last meal in the hotel restaurant.

13th March

We had pre-booked an Uber to take us to the airport, just to avoid any risk where long flights were concerned! It's fair to say that the whole 7,050 KM journey went pretty well - until it came to getting on an English train!

After starting our trip at 3AM UK time with an Uber, we enjoyed a relatively uneventful wait at Indira Ghandi airport, although we did end up rushing around at the end due to taking 45 minutes to change our remaining Rupees back to pounds. The Virgin flight back to Heathrow was typically Virgin, smooth, straightforward and comfortable, although it was slightly enhanced by the Premium Economy seats we had. Thank you Airmiles!

We landed at Heathrow on time, collected our luggage, and then got the underground to King's Cross just as rush hour was dying down, arriving there with two hours before our 21:00 train back to York. We were just settling down into the first class lounge (yes - I bought first class tickets for this trip because I knew we might have time to kill!) when it occurred to me that it might be worth a few pounds to try and catch an earlier train, if possible, and get home before midnight. This also went smoothly, although we had to sacrifice first class for  standard, but gained almost two hours.

Two hours which we swiftly lost, as our train up to York was delayed - by almost two full hours!

So it's fair to say that after almost 20,000KM of travel on busses, trains and taxis in 8 different countries, it wa just typical that our first UK public transport experience was a poor one. Looking on it positively though, due to delay-repay, it did end up being free!

So that was it. Home to a lovely welcome from my Sibs, with a packet of Bacon and a pint of milk in the fridge, and lovely clean sheets on the bed. Time to start saving again for next time!