Day 8 Delhi

We disembarked the train at 7:30 am and said goodbye to our fellow travelers. At 11 am, we started a photo tour of old Delhi. The guide was a photographer very knowledgeable of the area. He not only took us on a narrated tour of the old Delhi, but also pointed out good places to photograph and made suggestions how. He was teaching Bo how to set the camera manually to take interesting pictures of moving objects, even slowly moving. The results have yet to be determined. After about an hour, we were joined by another photography enthusiast, Dennis from Brisbane. He was also a street food enthusiast because he booked a combined photography and street food tasting tour. Jaidev, our guide, offered the same combination to us at no extra cost, but we initially refused. We walked through numerous very small streets loaded with people, vendors, and motorcycles and pedicabs. One area was automotive. Men rebuilding everything by hand – clutch, alternator, brake, etc. Another area was many shops selling wedding supplies, jewelry, fruits and vegetables. Even though we had decided not to eat street food but our guide bought us an assortment and we could not resist. We tried a bunch of little appetizers and breads with different sauces, two kinds of sweets, then we stopped at another little place for an unusual fruit sandwich with an Indian masala tea with water buffalo milk, and after more walking, we stopped for ice cream, which was also very unusual – a mango was hollowed, stuffed with mango ice cream and then frozen. Then we went through a dried fruits and nuts street and a spice market, which had a chili room upstairs. We started to cough there and we noticed a lot of people were coughing, too. The chili in the air was irritating respiratory system. The crowds and number of shops was unbelievable. After about 4 hours we made our way back to the parking lot so we could be driven back to the hotel, shower, rest and go to the airport for our midnight flight. Getting to the airport was a trial. The hotel told us the travel agency had not paid the hotel for the room even though we paid the travel agency two weeks ago. Then the drive to the airport was harrowing. So much traffic, 3 lane road with 5 across vehicles constantly changing lanes. Fortunately, the two flights home were uneventful.