Leaving Bundi and Delhi - jim

Our last morning in Bundi we were up early, we had a bus to catch to get us to the nearest train station which was an hour's bus ride away in the industrial town of Kota. After breakfast we caught a auto rickshaw to the bus stand and connected with a bus that was just ready to pull our. The trip was pleasant, the bus never entirely filled up and it was interesting to get a look at the villages and farms that are between the cities that we have been travelling to . In Kota it was only an auto rickshaw ride to the train station. everything had gone to well this morning and we were early, so we made ourselves comfortable on some benches and read our books. Our train left pretty close to on time and so we were off to Delhi once again. We talked with an interesting 17 year old and his mother on the train. He was heading home after finishing a two year cram course to prepare him for the entrance exams for IIT, the Indian Institute of Technology, the most difficult school to get into in India. I had read an article about it in the states sometime in the past year. He was now heading home to study a bit more before the exam in late April. The time it takes to prepare for these kinds of tests is something I never experienced in the states and though there are now standerdized test prep courses two years still seems like a real long time. The train sped along and we were running about on time until we got close to Delhi and then it slowed way down and we finally got there about 7:30, around an hour late but not bad. From the train station we were only an auto rickshaw ride, a Metro trip, a bicycle rickshaw ride and a short walk away from our hotel, which when we arrived, for the third time on our trip seemed like home. We still had things to do this day, Shiela was leaving for the airport at 6 AM the next morning and she had to repack and also pack a new bag with things, a lot of books, that Adam and I were sending back with her. So we grabbed a quick dinner, ordered a cab for the next morning, got a few things we had left in Delhi out of storage and got her packed and ready to go in the morning. Then about 11PM we finally got some sleep.

Sheila was off the next morning, Adam and I got her things down to the lobby and she took the cab to the airport on her own. We went back to the room and back to sleep. When I woke up a bit later I discovered that Adam had been up three or four times since we had come back to the room. He had developed a case of travellers disease and he spent the entire day in bed drinking water and watching TV between trips to the bathroom. I spent most of the day updating the blog and doing a little reading, ironically I was finally feeling a bit better. And now today, and I am caught up. We got up late, I ate breakfast, Adam wasn't quite ready for that, we changed some dollars for the balance of our trip, checked out of our room and are now at an internet cafe in the final race to get this blog caught up. Later todau we might visit a few bookstores in central Delhi, but other than that we wont be doing anything else until we catch a train at 8 PM to the southern India city of Bangalore, from which we will go immediatly to the nearby city of Mysore. This is a one day, two night trip so you wont be hearing from us for at least that long and if experience is any guide a bit longer.