Not What I Intended

My new camera takes beautiful photos of beautiful girl! Would I like to go for coffee???

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Needless to say Delhi was not a place I had intended spending more than a fleeting day in transit here and there. My original intuition was good, Delhi does not have any of the charms of other parts of India, or at least not from what I saw.

But it had to be done, so I found myself hanging out there for 5 days trying to organise my Passport and Visa and figure out where to next!

The passport bit turned out to be a breeze, went in monday with all necessary documents (getting faxes sent internationally in Delhi is damned near impossible) and the emergency travel doc came through midday wednesday. The NZ embassy was FANTASTIC, although I did get a bit of a naughty child feeling when I told them my story........

The Indian Visa.................a different story. They have a foriegners registration office which is open less than 5 hours a day and has masses of ppl milling about with no idea as to how to go about getting what they are there for! I managed to figure it out, and got to the front desk 3 hours later with 1 minute to spare before closing only to be told that I would have to come back in TEN days as they needed proof of entry.........must remember next time to photocopy visa AFTER arriving so that the arrival date is stamped on it (trick for young players). Plane ticket butts, and my actual physical presence were apparently not enough! However, my actual physical presense would be required in 10 days in order to ASK whether I can have a Visa.........fingers crossed!

I managed to get in a day of shopping whilst waiting, and tracked down a new camera.........seems to work quite well! I also managed to get numerous invitations for coffee/dinner/family home all of which I can almost garuantee would have translated to travel agency! Delhites are cheeky bastards!!!!! Their sweet talking cracks me up! I dont know where they picked it all up from (I can only guess it was cheesy American TV programs) but it is like they have found all of the cheesiest lines that have ever been uttered and hashed them all together to come up with a stream of complete and utter hilarity. They then manage to look very wide eyed and offended when you brush off their sincere adoration............... ..(insert rolling eyed picture of sally here (incidentally Indian ppl do not pick up on this AT ALL)).

So after finding that I couldn't get a visa I decided to head off to Rajastan and try my luck on the northern trains...............