Having travelled for over 7 months without any major losses it appeared my luck was coming to an end; when packing up to get off a night train at Delhi I had my handbag stolen containing all of my essential belongings such as passport (and visa), purse (cash and card), camera (irreplaceable pictures), ipod, jewellery, etc... Not exactly the best start to the day but, after filing a police report and making an appointment at the British Embassy, we soldiered on and went to explore the city. Surprisingly the theft didn't dampen our view of the city, which was quite nice and a good place to shop.
The next day we awoke to find at least 7 cockroaches (if not more) crawling around our hotel room; on the bed, floor, and even our bags. Another stressful morning! We left immediately, letting the incredibly rude staff know how we were planning on reviewing their disgusting hotel on trip advisor. We found a much nicer hotel and chilled out, trying to not the stress get to us.
During our stay in Delhi Jonny wanted to find a sitar, so we spent quite a lot of time looking around many different music shops and even some workshops / factories in people's homes where we were practically force fed chai tea and home made snacks. It was quite interesting, and I'm sure my Dad would have enjoyed seeing the different processes of manufacture.
Our meeting at the British Embassy went incredibly well and I was issued an emergency passport in just 4 hours! Unfortunately the visa has not been so easy to acquire, however it is currently being processed and I just have to make sure to pick it up from Delhi before exiting the country.
Even though Delhi has caused us stress and hassle during our stay, I still liked the city and would recommend others to visit.
We then travelled to Rishikesh on another night train. The scenery around our hotel was wonderful, surrounded by mountains. Poor Jonny was ill for a couple of days when we were unfortunately staying in a hotel room without television or wifi.. I read two books in three days!
When he was feeling well enough we rented a scooter to explore the area. It was nice driving around the peaceful mountains taking in the beautiful sights. At one point a donkey (or a mule - I'm not really sure what the difference is) climbed up a hill onto the road behind us and started chasing us! It was right behind us for at least a kilometre! We saw a man walking on his own so I shouted to warn him and he literally dove into the bushes at the side of the road to hide from it! I have heard a statistic that you are more likely to get kicked to death by donkeys than die in an aeroplane crash, but didn't actually think it was true until now..
We met up with Joe who is currently living there doing rafting down the Ganges along with some of his friends. We didn't actually do any rafting (not my sort of thing!) but it was fantastic to meet up with him for a catch up along with some vodka and card games.
I'm not sure if I caught it off Jonny or ate some dodgy food, but I got a stomach bug too.. Great.. After a couple of days eating plain rice and watching reruns on tv we got a taxi back to Delhi as all other forms of transport were booked up over the Easter weekend. We decided to get it overnight to avoid wasting time travelling, forgetting how dangerous Indian roads can be especially in the dark. I dozed for some of the way but Jonny, bless him, kept his eyes on the road the entire time to make sure the driver didn't get tired or make any dangerous driving manoeuvres and we have arrived safe.
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