With the luggage deposited in the railway station after fooling the Indian bureaucracy by inventing a fake destination and fake ticket number, of course could not have ended up elsewhere but in Paharganj – the old bazaar district in Delhi, home to our previous visit. And the first familiar face appeared: the waiter boy in what I remember as “the liver serving restaurant” on the main street of the bazaar.
A breakfast to load the stomach and 2 coffees to brighten up the view and off we go to do what we didn’t do in Delhi the last time – travel to the suburbs by public bus. 6 rupees less (60 rupees to a euro), one hour sharing the highest ever density of human beings per square foot, and we reached the Qutub Minar.
Surrounded by a large park of partly luxuriant vegetation....
....“the tallest brick minaret in the world”….in other words, “the might of Islam”, an 11th century gift to the Hindu people, on the occasion of their conquest by the Muslims, constructed with the bricks taken from 10 Jain temples which once stood on the same spot.
I've lost my mojo....after a night long Aeroflot flight, in a plane older than me (Ilyushin II– 96-300).
The late afternoon Amristar express train ultimately proved to worth its’ 10 dollar ticket, not necessarily because of its’ speed or due to the huge size of the senatorial armchairs in the A/C class, but because of the delicious food, tea, snacks, cola, coffee, sweets, etc., which was being served continuously all along the journey. To my cynical amusement, a Bollywood like handy dandy near me was using his last generation lap-top to watch a soap movie in the small screen….i guess he was not acquainted with the full screen option…..not to mention that the schmuck got excited when the monitor turned black in the middle of a 5 minute kiss.....until somebody felt sorry for him and hit any key on the keyboard…but unfortunately the kiss had finished by that time.
