The Route

The Route
It is a very long way.....

Saturday 30 April 2011

22nd April - Varanesi Chill Day

I had a long breakfast and ate far too much. When will I learn that just because you can eat as much as you want from a buffet, it does not mean that you have too!

It was a shame that we could not get another night at the Ramada as we had stayed there on a special offer and for a very reasonable price. I have been on major budget but decided to have a holiday from traveling and stay somewhere lovely for a couple of days. We had to move to another hotel after check out time. We had booked it last night on the internet but it might have been cheaper just to turn up and barter. However, bartering constantly can be exhausting and neither of us were in the mood to waste hours checking out different hotels and trying to get the best price. The new room was OK in comparison to other places I have stayed but very expensive for the quality. It was a very "Indian" hotel rather than an international place.

After we had checked in I went off with Babu (our Rickshaw driver) to do a little bit of shopping for some booze and also to see if I could find anywhere that sold inner tubes. The booze is very expensive due to tax increases in this state and again it took time to shop around and barter. I am fed up with this side of India now. I had no success with inner tubes. These thing often take far longer than they should in India.

I ended up chatting for hours with Johnie and then had a swim in the small, very cold, slightly dirty pool. We went out for diner at the Pizza Hut just up the road. I was surprised by the fact that is was a very lovely meal. Very funny that I do not normally eat in these sorts of places when in the UK. It was nice to have a break from Indian food and eat a proper salad and some meat without curry! :-)

In India these places are considered really expensive and they are the places were upper middle class Indians eat. In the UK they are considered cheap places to eat.

Reasonably early night as need to be up early tomorrow morning. Lovely to have a chilled day but still need to catch up on sleep. I keep on planning to have a long catch up nap but then end up talking rubbish with Johnnie.

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