A pleasant interlude 2

From Delhi

 

Our B+B in Delhi

We decided to fly the next leg of our journey, and took the plane one evening to Delhi, where we stayed in what we would now call a B+B. While there we met John Eade, the son of colleagues of mine from Agartala, who was working at the New Zealand Embassy.

Two evenings later we left on the Madras Mail towards the centre of India, and got off the train two hours later at Agra. There we checked in to a flash-sounding hotel which turned out to be a lemon.  When we left before daybreak for our sunrise visit to the Taj Mahal, we complained to the proprietor, who suggested we put our complaint in writing, and promised that everything would be fixed by the next time we paid him a visit! 

Our hotel in Agra

The visit to the Taj was one of the trip highlights. It is such a beautiful building, and has been so carefully looked after and restored, that we lingered a while just soaking up the atmosphere. Later we visited the red fort and saw the Taj again across the river, and then caught a local train for Lucknow, where we caught a slow train via Patna for Calcutta. Like our earlier trains, this one started out pulled by an electric locomotive, but from Allahabad we changed to a steam loco, because there was at that stage no electric traction on the line through Bihar. The main line direct to Calcutta was electrified as it was the direct way of travelling between Delhi and Calcutta. 

At the Taj Mahal

In Calcutta we explored the central city and paid a couple of visits to the New Market. When we went to a money-changer to change a traveller’s cheque, he greeted us with the good news that the NZ dollar was worth more than the US one. 

After a couple of nights in Calcutta, we Taxied to Dum Dum airport for a 737 flight to Gauhati in Assam. It was a glorious day, and we had great views of the whole Himalaya Range, including Everest, to the north of us. From Gauhati, which sits onn the south bank of the Brahmaputra River, we caught a rather primitive bus for Shillong in the Khasi Hills just to the south. 

Outside our hotel in Shillong

Shillong is a pretty town on the top of the hills at about 5000 feet above sea level. It was winter, the weather was cool, and the country was mostly dry. It is also the town where Terry was born and we were there to show him his birthplace. Unfortunately he did not see much of it, as he had caught the tummy bug that Margaret had had briefly in Delhi, and which I picked up later and suffered from when we were in Brahmanbaria. He had to spend most of our time in Shillong in bed. Margaret and I did not venture far from our hotel room, which was kept warm by the staff feeding the fire all the time, so Terry was able to sleep in comfort.

 

 

Ready to catch the train from Agra