Activity level: 🌶️
Modes of transportation: 🚗
This was our first late checkout in a while; we didn’t leave until around 11. Our driver Ratan showed up with Sarah’s sari, so we ran back up to the hotel room to put it on. It looked great! People were definitely staring as we left the hotel, but we assumed it was just a rare sight seeing a white person in a sari (we get a lot of stares as white people as-is).
We missed breakfast, but our driver assured us that the best place to eat was about an hour drive away. So we drove to get out of the city before stopping at a sort of rest station. We both went to the bathroom, and Sarah was in the bathroom a while.
While there, Sarah tried adjusting the sari since she was getting more stares (and laughs?) than seemed warranted. Luckily there were some teenagers in there who looked at her outfit and said “That’s wrong.” Sarah was momentarily worried she was about to get canceled, but they just meant she was wearing it wrong and happily adjusted it so it looked good. Eric saw the teenagers leaving the bathroom giggling and Sarah came out looking elegant as ever.
Lunch didn’t disappoint. We got a thali platter, which is a sort of a sampler platter that’s apparently a specialty of the region (we knew it was going to be good when we saw it was an “pure veg” restaurant). The food was fantastic; it came with butter paneer, naan, some sort of dal dish, and then who knows what else. All delicious, and by far our cheapest meal. It even came with ice cream!
For drinks, Eric ordered sweet lassi and Sarah got the salted lime drink. Turns out, they use black salt, so the lime drink tasted like sulfur. Eric tried to drink it to be polite, but we didn’t finish it (the lassi was good though).
After that, it was pretty much driving all day. Sarah started to research our options for Egypt, and Eric wrote some blog posts. By the time we got to Delhi, the air quality was so bad (maxing out the AQI index at 500) that we couldn’t really do much or leave our hotel. It was so bad that the city banned non-essential diesel vehicles temporarily.
So we pretty much just ate at the hotel and planned the rest of our trip. Eric ended up calling ANA to change our flights slightly (added one more day to accommodate Nile cruises), and Sarah booked hotels. It was pretty low key, and we had to be at the airport at 5 AM the next day.
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