April 1

Srinegar
Both Remi and I were fairly groggy from lack of sleep when we dove down into the mountains and landed at Srinegar. We were not ready for the Tourist Police. They were charming but very determined to put us on a houseboat. They even found some houseboat owners who were willing to rent for the 200 rupees a night we were willing to pay. They surrounded us on the bus and ushered us into the Tourist Police Station in town. One guy was very hard nosed about it, but I just kept telling them there was no way I was going on a boat, I was afraid of water, I wanted solid earth underneath me. We insisted on a hotel. Finally after many hard stares the guy gave up and one of his men escorted us to a land based lodge. Pretty basic accommodation, no central heating or hot water, but at least we had the freedom of the city. I had been warned by Kashmiri's to stay away from those houseboat owners, they even scare Kashmiri's they are so rapacious, and there are stories about houseboat owners refusing to let tourists off the boats until they accede to whatever demands the owners want to make. I don't like that kind of situation.

March 30-31

Delhi
If the trip to Goa and my stay there was stress free and uneventful the trip to Delhi certainly balanced it in the other direction. For starters the plane took off half an hour late, so my friend who had been waiting for me at the airport had already taken off by the time I got out of the departure area. I had to get some money from a Citi Bank ATM machine so I took off in a rickshaw to find one. Just outside of the airport the driver made me transfer to a cab. I guess a way to get past licensing arrangements at the airport. I wanted to get my money and find a 400 rupee room, I've found them before at Paragangi down by the railroad but he talked me into trying a hotel five minutes from the airport that he claimed cost 1200 rupees. By this time we had been through so many twisting Delhi streets I was getting seriously paranoid and just wanted out of this vehicle. Turns out the hotel will not rent anything for less than 2800 rs, and the taxi driver wants 1500 rs. Got the hotel bill down by 800 by simply not registering or getting a receipt, it was pretty late and got a few bucks off the taxi by showing him I didn't have any more money in my purse. Still cost me almost a hundred dollars for the night. Meanwhile my friend has gone over to the departure terminal and checked into a 500 rs retiring room I didn't know anything about. My Internet connection worked in the hotel so I left him an email saying I would meet him on the plane in the morning.

When I got there in the morning I learned my flight to Srinagar had been canceled. I got a new reservation for the next day and decided to just settle in for a twenty hour wait at the airport, I certainly couldn't afford another hundred dollar night in Delhi. It was not a comfortable wait. Delhi Domestic terminals do not have an air conditioned public concourse like Canadian airports. Once off the sidewalk and inside you are in a security area and cannot leave the building again. No smoking inside of course so I just settled down to wait in whatever shade I could find outside. It was hot, but not as hot as Puttaparthi and dry so at least I could dry out every now and then, unlike Goa. All day long I hung about outside until as evening approached the security people began to ask what I was doing. Waiting for a plane I told them. The airport manager decided to fire up the scanning machine and run my bags through that and let me stay inside for the night. Just then Remi shows up. He had left his luggage in the retiring room and headed off into town to do some sightseeing and was just returning. So we spent a restless couple of hours inside being eaten by mosquitoes. I managed to talk the guards at the door outside to let me out and back in again for the odd cigarette. There were as many people flaked out on the concourse waiting for flights as there were stretched out on the benches inside.

It was very interesting watching the daily operation of this airport. It's not a large terminal, something you might find in a small Canadian city like Abbotsford, but it pumps more people through in an hour than Abbotsford would see in a month. Very efficient. The last flights leave about 1:30 am and start departing again about 3:00 am. I looked out on to the loading area behind the building, it was like a parking lot for planes, hundreds of them sitting wingtip to wingtip as far as a person could see.

Then they started loading up and taking off. They must have been leaving that runway every thirty seconds or so. There was about ten minutes to get on the plane before it was rolling into the takeoff queue. The pilot announced that there were 27 planes ahead of us. It didn't matter to me. There were no mosquitoes in the plane. I was sound asleep.