Trip Report Part Three - A Speed Tour of Delhi

Sunday morning we woke up bright and early to try to catch the sunrise from our hotel's roof deck. The view would have been beautiful aside from the unfortunate fact that there was a giant tree directly in our line of sight to the Taj. Alas. After catching breakfast at our hotel, we hit the road and headed back to Delhi.

Once back in Delhi, our driver took us on a brief tour of the city. Our first stop was the Lotus Temple:



For some reason it reminds me of the Sydney Opera House. Here too we had to take our shoes off, but unfortunately there were no shoe covers to take advantage of. I was amused to be walking around barefoot, but unfortunately the pavement outside was very hot.

From there we headed to India Gate, which looks rather like the Arc de Triomphe:



All of the government buildings are also in that vicinity, so we drove by the Parliament, the President's house, various Ministry buildings, etc. This part of the city was entirely different from anything else I've seen thus far thus far in India. The streets were straight and wide, and traffic was quite orderly. It reminded me of the promenade leading up to Buckingham Palace in London (I swear not everything reminded me of attractions in other countries!).

Amusing anecdote - At one point while we were driving through Delhi, a bus driver ran a red light and cut off our driver. Our driver slammed on the breaks, put the car in park and got out to go over and start yelling at the bus driver. Another tourist car driver saw the situation, and also parked his car in the middle of the road to get out and yell at the bus driver as well on our driver's behalf. It was actually pretty comical.

With that our speed tour of Delhi was complete, and our driver dropped us back off at the guest house to chill for a few hours before our flight left. We had dinner and watching Wedding Crashers, and it was a nice and relaxing evening, that is until we left for the airport.

Since we no longer had our pre-arranged driver, the staff at the guest house called us a regular cab. For some reason the cabbie decided he needed to hose off his car before we headed to the airport, so we sat in the car while he did this. Unfortunately, both of the back doors leaked so we had to huddle in the middle to try to stay dry.

When we got to the airport, we had to have the ticket counter to print our itineraries so that we'd be allowed in. Unfortunately, since our flight was massively delayed (which we knew about ahead of time and planned accordingly), our original flight time had already passed, and the security guard could not understand that our flight had been delayed. This was a massive hassle, and finally one of the airline staff members had to come over and speak with the security guard on our behalf.

Once we got through security, we found out that our flight was once again delayed. By the time we finally got back to Hyderabad, it was 2:00AM. Way past my bedtime!