The bus got us to Delhi at 6 a.m. and we caught an auto rickshaw to Ringo’s Hotel. We had a shower and changed, then had some breakfast while we waited for a dorm bed. Diana and Kate were both there: Diana back to her usual posh self after having a rabies injection, convinced that she’d caught rabies from the cook at the Peacock Hotel in Pushkar.
Our first job was to go over to the New Delhi railway station and buy two first-class tickets on the overnight train to Varanasi, then we walked back through Connaught Place and bought a cheap camera to replace Linda’s one, which broke down while we were in Agra. Back at Ringo’s, we packed up all of the stuff to be sent home and took it up to the Post Office where we went through the usual rigmarole of sending a parcel from India to New Zealand.
That completed, we returned to Ringoes for the rest of the day. By an amazing coincidence, two girls from our area in New Zealand had arrived. Sindee Beecroft was from Temuka and had worked in a shearing gang at Grampians [sheep station] the last shearing that I was there; and Sarah Thompson, from Tekapo, knew [my brother] Joe and had just been talking to him just a couple of days previously at the Duntroon sheep sale.
That evening we all went out for a meal at one of the small restaurants down the street from the hotel, then to a place called Nirula’s for ice creams afterwards.
CurseOfTheTraveller 