Saturday 7th - Happy Anniversary

Seven weeks has just flown by. This is our last full day in India for this trip. It is also our thirty fifth wedding anniversary. We take the Metro to Chandni Chowk as we plan to visit some of the markets. We get quite a surprise when we get out onto the eponymous street. The eastbound carriageway has been dug up and is being used as a parking lot and open air warehouse. The westbound traffic seems to be purely for westbound traffic apart from cycle rickshaws. It is hard to tell whether this is a temporary measure or a permanent one but it does seem to make it easier to get around. We hop a rickshaw for the ride up to the spice market where the shops are just starting to open. R finds a cast iron tawa for making roti and gets a year's supply of cumin seeds for a pound.

We make our way back along the shady side of the Chowk. R wants to look at fabric shops but most of them are still closed. We drop in to Haldiram's for a lassi and then we go downstairs to select dome sweets to take home. The choice is mindboggling but we are helped out by a member of staff with good English who appears to have been tasked with helping tourists. The wheeze works for us. 

Our well established Old Delhi routine requires us to take a walk up Kinari Bazaar where R resists the temptation to buy a suitcase full of haberdashery. Using the wonders of online mapping D navigates the alleys through to Chowri Bazaar and manages to find the brilliant gulab jamun stall that he utterly failed to find a year ago. This triumph is followed up with a visit to the short stretch of street that hosts mehendi artists so that R can get her hand painted.  

The chores complete we travel by cycle rickshaw, then auto to the ludicrously expensive Imperial Hotel for a cocktail to celebrate our anniversary. We lunch at a rather more economical spot on CP which gets us to 3 p.m. The sky has clouded over and there is clearly a storm brewing. We take the metro to Jor Bagh to collect our book order and walk back briskly to the bungalow as the thunder starts. We just make it in time before the heavens open. A repack just about fits everything in and we settle our bill and book a taxi. At dinner we meet a lady also heading back to Glasgow tomorrow so we offer her a lift.