India travel notes (34) back to Delhi — it's like coming home

When the aircraft near Delhi, I watched the aircraft below the scattered light, contrary to his own surprise, had a strange feeling of warmth. Until we walked in the Embassy district wide front Street lamp bright, clean streets, carrying luggage stand at the back of the Chinese Embassy and quiet street of youth hostels in front, I realize, that strange feeling of intimacy is the feeling of home. Indeed, unlike the noisy at night in Bombay and colorful, unlike n'taghalgue da night dark and bleak, unlike the city night over a mysterious and strange, or g long vlaho night full of nature and ancient atmosphere, and we go through these cities, Delhi is refreshing, night of structured, quiet, calm, as the one running around waiting for us travellers. Hostels help desk Lady continued to smile as before, but we face than to have a little more tired.

Because of the way, we have put all the supplies consumed clean, come back first thing is to purchase the next day went to Agra food.

Not far away from the youth hostel (as long as two to three minutes by scooter, five rupees), there is a shop, shop of course are menlian. According to introduction, the Embassy friends of bread here is quite good quality. We bought a large Pack of whole wheat sliced bread, 17 rupees, definitely enough for our second day four of the lunch.

Maybe we get back too late, hostels 360 rupees one round-trip Agra's coach has been set up, we had to find another alternative.

The youth hostel right that Sikhs who drove a taxi company once gave us a good impression, so, we still find them. Negotiate back and forth to 2900 rupees, halfway to Agra to four spots, 6: 30 in the morning, the day of departure. Special emphasis, to an English speaking driver, and then note the hire company of telephone and on the second day after our taxi license plate number, pay a deposit of 500 rupees for, we can feel at ease back to "home" for the rest.

Before going to bed, I went to the hotel's internet services, send two messages.

Their computer installed is windows98 English version, but is not the first version of the upgrade, you cannot read Chinese website. I propose to the waiter, could take the system upgrade, the answer is that he does. I can help them to upgrade to the newer version in order to read a variety of languages. The waiter said consent, but downloading the upgrade software for the Internet costs must be paid by me. If a mouthful ass meal! help them do things, but also my own paid? also, dial-up connection, the download speed is 3k/s and a download file with 20M. Come on, I have yet to report on internationalism. But anyway, I still pay I pay for Internet access charges, and he even went to windows update to upgrade, and begin the download. But I just leaving the seat, the waitress turned off the machine immediately. I asked the waiter, does he not want to have more foreign guests can surf the net? get answer is that he is only responsible for power-on shut-down fees, other things are not as he can. India's staff, is really very principled, almost to the point of the Grail. Such things in India see much, flattering.

This one night sleep very aggressive.

6: 30 in the morning, taxi drivers get parking in front of the youth hostels and upstairs and tell us you can view, was very courteous and let people make sense of the "masters".

The only regret is that this driver is fluent in English in India. Fortunately, after eight nine basic adaptation, we can deal with listened, even as die decent to imitate the way India English pronunciation. But regardless of whether or not adapted to the India English, talking about important topics, such as price, location, time, etc., as repeatedly confirmed, even to write with a pen on paper up to confirm it. Because India person too dogmatic, once the misunderstanding, they are very reluctant to flexibility.

From Delhi to Agra Taj Mahal is located 230 km in total, between the two cities are the so-called "high way", but our driver took off four hours.

India's Highway is not our common closed highway, more similar to our open road, traffic or even better than our national highway. Most of the time, the road motorcycles, trucks, cars, three-wheeled motorcycle, or even animal la cart is mixed, originally only two lanes for high way, be shared with all kinds of vehicles. In order to guarantee our tour time (estimate as he could go home early in the evening), our drivers in traffic back and forth. Because of the large trucks on the road, overtaking is not easy, but India is a Commonwealth universal left line traffic rules, we are not comfortable with, each time when we were very nervous. Some sections or no isolation Pier, overtaking is frequently and oncoming cars face to face, our drivers never therefore slow down until the last moment before playing round to the left. If you do not open the habit of right rudder left line of the car to drive in India, in this case, the strained the likelihood of traffic accidents caused or quite large. All the tension, we arrived in Agra, the average speed of less than 60 km/h.

Because of the Taj Mahal, and the city was not lying-dynasty (India last dynasty) of the capital, we imagined Agra city should be a clean and tidy, the ancient surviving, cultural atmosphere, the more concentrated beautiful city, but this is not the case.

Agra in the street as we had been in the narrow streets and small cities, road worn, roadside hawker stalls at your ease the lack of planning, menlian shop decoration, without stress, ground everywhere refuse, various vehicle congestion in the dusty streets and bustling, Kestrels cattle also occasionally does not slow down the street, wild dogs also flow through the crowd, even in immersing in time to see someone at the side of the toilet …. See this scene, we even begin to doubt the world's admiration of the Taj Mahal is unworthy of vain.