I set my alarm this morning because I really wanted to do yoga. I went to the gym and the man there walked me over to the yoga studio at the Oberoi. We were told the yoga teacher was running late. He arrived and explained that we would be doing a detoxification class. First we did breath work and then almost immediately not warmed up he put us in very deep yoga poses which included camel. He seemed to mostly want to show us that he could do them not really caring whether or not we followed along. At this point I began doing my own yoga class because I was afraid of getting hurt.
After yoga I went to the gym and ran on the treadmill. I was feeling really good about my easy "fast" pace was in kilometers per hour. Wahhh wahhh. Oh well. After a shower I headed to the land of unending choices also known as the breakfast buffet.
Nadia joined me a little later and we definitively decided that the train was out as my mode of transport. I asked the hotel how much it would cost for me to use one of their recommended drivers. The answer: $570 if the drive was only 3 hours after that it was "additional". I enquired as to what "additional" meant and the man merely repeated "additional per time". Wowza. No. I asked the man what he thought of that price and he laughed. Enough said. We then called the company that had been recommended and they could have a driver to me in couple of hours.
I checked out of the hotel and we hung out while I waited. Eventually he arrived and I was off through what would likely have been an extremely terrorizing drive through Delhi if I hadn't been so in awe of how he maneuvered the car. I was so captivated I only wished my seatbelt worked 5 or so times. There was a sign in a particularly wide, clear part of the road that said: Slow Down. Accident Prone Area. Had they seen the rest of Delhi? That should just be a continuous sign plastered on everything everywhere. As luck would have it just beyond this sign the driver pulled over (still on the road), got out, and walked into a store. So now we were stopped in the "Accident Prone Area". Maybe he had taken the slow down very literally? Maybe he had had it with the traffic? He got out and left the car running and for a moment I wondered what my plan would be if a random guy got in and started driving. It seemed the likelihood of that was lower than it would normally be since we were stopped in the road and a person would have to be really dedicated to get in position to get in the car. Fortunately by that time he was back explaining that he had to refill the minutes on his phone.
After that we drove on the wrong side of the median for a bit (yes. You read that correctly: into oncoming traffic. And at this point who really needs a seatbelt? It probably wouldn't do anything productive. Being thrown from the car might be a blessing in disguise. Kidding. Kind of. Driving in Delhi is not for the faint of heart. I wonder how I would have reacted if I hadn't already experienced Addis Ababa.). Driving into oncoming traffic did serve one purpose, I no longer even felt a tiny bit tense when we were driving in both lanes. Lanes are just suggestions here. So this ended up relaxing me a lot for the rest of the way.
Back on the correct side of the road and on the expressway the rest of the actual driving part was somewhat uneventful.
Towards the end of the drive (it took about 5.5 hours), we started seeing many small smokestacks. I asked what they were for and he responded building. When we got close to one and I could see mounds and mounds of bricks. As we continued on I saw the rudimentary structures they were building with the bricks in various stages of completion. This was a huge upgrade from the lean-to buildings resembling bird's nests out of anything they could find and the grass huts which often looked like they were caving in.
We stopped twice. Once because I think he was falling asleep. This time he disappeared for about 30 min. During that time, I went to the washroom and thought about cholera when I looked at the sink (I elected to use my hand sanitizer, which remembering to bring it was a major victory for this trip). Then I did various exercises outside of the car until he returned. The second stop was on the side of the road about 2 min from my hotel for no apparent reason (I even asked why we weren't going to the hotel with no answer given). Five minutes later a guy who turned out to be part owner of the company got in. He asked for my feedback and I told him that I wish I had been told why were stopping all three times. To make up for this he offered tour and transport to my next destination. We bartered for a bit settling on rates and times. It was a win win and my next day and my next transport was planned.
I checked into the hotel and was told it was now unsafe to go out by myself. They offered to serve me dinner there or take me to a recommended place. On the ride, I had had plenty of left over naan so I decided just to go to bed. It was 645.
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