wow! Intrepid India, yeah yeah, its a group tour - but small group, and a little more real - public transport and modest accomodations. Anyways - always thought tours are a good means to ease into a new area, and this has been like a galaxy far far away fro anything i've done before!
Had grand plans for Mongolia this year, but too much procrasitination and an email from an old friend saw me touching down in Delhi at 2:30am, two Fridays ago to start burning off all my leave entitlements with Intrepids 15 day Delhi to Kathmandu itinerary.
Getting out of the airport proved simple, as did getting ripped off by the pre-paid taxi stand...Unfortunately the hotel address Intrepid provided wasn't sufficient for my cab driver.. and the hotel phone numbers out of date, so spent about two hours driving around some very sketchy streets, with my driver waking up friends to ask for help before we finally honed in on our destination.. Hotel Good Times!
With Kasia not due in from Miami till 11pm that night I had some time to kill, so duely fell prey to a very enthusiastic auto rickshaw driver outside the hotel... the ride was fun sure enough, managed to put an end to his penchant for visiting all the wonderful private 'shoppin emporiums' in delhi fairly quickly and actually saw some cool local sights but probably paid him a months wage for the privilige...
Delhi traffic - LOVE it - free for all, without the road rage. Having lived in the US for so long I can't imagine how american drivers could get their head around the whole traffic concept here, but I'd love to hit the streets with Kato!
11pm, hit the airport with my very friendly hotel driver to meet Kasia, look at the boards to see a 2 hour delay on her flight, no problem driver cheerfully runs off to grab some food and sleep in the van while I sit down and start chatting to a german guy waiting out a three hour delay on his fathers flight.
Kasia lands in due course, looking fabulous despite an insane routing of over 30 hours! Our sleepy drivers runs over the kurb coming out propelling us into the vans roof just to make sure we don't dose off and miss the excitment of weaving through the constant stream of trucks that roam the roads at night.
Hitting hotel good times about 3am we try to get some shut eye , the group meet is in nine hours and then the real fun will begin...
