What happened in Delhi, Part II
Aah the joy of being back in Delhi. Actually what am I talking about? There was very little joy to be had.
We had headed back down from the Himalayas reluctantly, but relieved by the fact that we would soon get some relief from the (by now slightly exhausting) heat and chaos of the plains when we crossed over into Nepal. We arrived into Delhi at 6am from Pathankot (never go to Pathenkot) and promptly went to the information desk to book our onward train to Lumbini at the Nepalese border. All booked for the next 5 days: fab. I guess we’re hanging in Delhi for a while, then.
The mercury smashed through the 40* barrier daily, making sight-seeing a massive chore and Paharaganj even less appealing than usual. We made valiant attempts out to see some sights on a couple of occasions - and these attempts mostly just dissolved into over-elaborate ice-cream trips or sitting in traffic for so long that we physically LIFTED UP the rickshaw across the central divider of the road and turned around. Apart from that, the only thing worth writing home about was how we were poisoned by the ‘filtered’ (”100% safe good madam - our water filter run 24/7!”) water at our hotel and basically just ate toast for three days.
Then, on the morning of our train, we are sitting in the Nepalese cafe in our alleyway where we’d eaten every day for a week, when the owner comes running in shouting: “There’s been an earthquake!”
Nothing on the news yet; we finish breakfast and go back up to our concrete cell - flipping open the laptop to see if it’s worth pushing our train back another day or two. And, well…