Tuesday 17th - Pancake day.

The cold tablets do a knockout job on R and she sleeps in until 8.45.  We have breakfast but even an aloo paratha, her favourite,  does not cheer her up and she takes another tablet and crawls back into bed. D does some light blogging for a while and then heads out to explore more of Aurangabad.

You probably have to be Aurangabad's mother to love the place. It is sprawling, dusty and intersected at regular intervals by pungent open sewers. If there is any kind of historic centre D utterly fails to find it. The place even has insects so hard up that they are ptepared to bite D, a first in our five Indian trips. There is some kind of market in front of a Hindu temple but it is a poor affair and utterly devoid of shade. A canopy is provided for the benefit of those queueing for the temple where there seems to be a good turnout today. Do Hindus celebrate Shrove Tuesday?

We are totally out of Orange Bites, our favourite Indian boiled sweet, and D enquires at some likely looking establishments but nobody has them. He does get a couple of 2 rupee sachets of Surf Extra so we can do emergency laundry. Eventually a stall holder suggests 'Orangefillz' as an alternative. These are condisiderably smaller but Rs10 is invested. They turn out to be a reasonable substitute with some kind of liquid centre. 

Back at the Oberoi R is still feeling ropey so a siesta is invoked. By 3 p.m. she is feeling a little better so decide to do something. The two Aurangabad attractions (as listed by LP) that we have missed are the Aurangabad Caves and Panchakki. We had caves yesterday and will have caves tomorrow.  Three days out of three seems like overkill so we go for Panchakki, which means 'water wheel' and is described as 'a garden complex'.





 When we get there we realise that we drove past it yesterday on the way to the Baby Taj. Garden complex is gilding the lilly a little. The famous watermill is in a small building at one corner and there are various water tanks occupying the grounds of a mosque. R does spot a few bee-eaters and wagtails as well as some kind of dark brown martin. None of these are prepared to pose for photos.

R fancies a cup of tea so we pick LP's recommended smart hotel, the Lemon Tree. This turns out to be a longer ride than we expected and even less effort goes into their Lemon tea than at the Panjim Marriott. To add insult to injury they pull the 'no change' stunt for 11 rupees. In disgust we head back to our room and D is sent to the offy just around the corner for a couple of beers. This establishment has very limited stock and as far as cold beers go there is one strong brand and one very strong. D chooses the lesser of two evils and buys a couple of 8% by volume bottles of "Knock Out".  

This is just about palatable and fills the gap before we go to supper at the Panchavati Hotel, a sister establishment to the Oberoi. A big screen TV is screening a ludicrous shoot 'em up movie where the villains wear black and the hero a white jump suit a la Elvis in Vegas. It is all in Hindi until it finishes when "The End" appears in English. The portions are huge and we finish up leaving some food.