The return to Delhi was a bit more hopeful, we had shiny new visas to collect, reservations in a nice hotel in a different part of town and lots of goodwill. Abruptly we realised that our hotel was a dump in the middle of nowhere and so we shot straight back into town on the metro, sat in Cafe coffee day and hit the phones. We fell on our feet a bit with the YWCA Blue Triangle just south of Connaught Place - clean, friendly and more or less efficient. Crucially, it had wi-fi too, though we didn't discover that for a few days! Sadly, the delayed train, and hours messing around with hotels meant most of the day was gone, but we made a valient attempt at chores anyway. Our to do list for this trip was relatively small: Pick up Khazakh visas, buy more anti-malarial drugs, apply for Russian visa, see some sights.
We wanted to buy doxycycline hydrochloride, the same antimalarial drug we've been taking for the past 44 days, but we haven't found it anywhere. So, instead we wanted to find a chemist that wasn't on the roadside, had a vaguely trustworthy pharmacist and spoke reasonable English. People keep trying to sell us something similar, but none of them have filled us with confidence. From "yes, yes, yes" men who don't listen to the question before affirming it, to people who seemingly can't read, there's no escape from the feeling that we are entrusting our health to Del boys.
So, thinking that glittering shopping malls might be the way forward (or at least open, it being Sunday), off we went to NOIDA - a massive shopping district in the outskirts of Delhi. There were three glittery malls, all teeming with people. It was interesting to see a little more of the famed Indian shopping class, and, as with malls all over the world, at times we could have been anywhere - Adidas, Body Shop, Marks and Spencers, Subway, McDonalds gleamed alongside sparkly sari shops. The absence of helpful maps lead us to walk around each floor of each mall, and by 8pm we'd covered a lot of ground and still found no chemist! Aparently malls are not the same all over the world.
***We stopped in at a sort of English theme bar which missed the mark both in beer and atmosphere - more like a run down Hard Rock Cafe, then stuffed ourselves silly at Punjabi By Nature with a whole leg of lamb, table sized naan and a side order of nagging guilt. ***
As is usually the case with visas, once you've jumped through the hoops to submit the forms and pay the money, picking them up is fairly simple. Khazakhstan gave us our visas back with little hanging around, and on we went to jump through Russian hoops. You can see how they turn out such good gymnasts, hoop jumping really is a national sport.
To get a Russian visa, you need a letter of invitation, which can come from a hotel or travel agency in Russia. The Russian embassy in Delhi have outsourced their visa application process to Salvia, a travel agency, who want you to book a hotel through them in order to get a letter of invitation. After some discussion, we decamped to the internet and paid somebody in the ether to invite us - much cheaper, and you don't need a (coveniently expensive and uncancellable) hotel booking. 24hrs later, we took said letter back to them and began the 7 day wait for visas.
We made time to do at least one sight in Delhi, stopping at the National Museum and enjoying the various bronzes and stone statues. They had a great exhibition on Camadian Inuit art, and a fine collection of artefacts from the Indus Valley but precious little else. We weren't all that surprised to find rubble and people laid out sleeping in the museum...this is India, after all.
Delhi is definitely better on the second visit, both for us, and for the Commonwealth Games preperations: security is higher, more pavements are finished and we seemed to spend less time hiding out in coffee shops. It's still has elements of a building site, but there is hope for the Games yet. Nonetheless, we were happy to set off (late) towards the Punjab!
If you are going:
We couldn't find a budget hotel in South Delhi. If you want to escape Pahaganj, the Youth Hostels round CP are the way forward
