Delhi depressed

Easy to get in, easy to navigate round, now try and find a cheap hotel in amongst the road and building works that are going on virtually everywhere except the newest and most expensive areas. Talk about bad timing, once we’d found a hotel somewhere near double our budget we discovered all these “improvements” were in anticipation of the Commonwealth Games, in October, but it’ll all be done in the next 2 months, yeah, right. They’ve completely ripped up the commercial centre to the point where numerous businesses have closed down due to the lack of access, safety and no one would even know there was a shop or restaurant there thanks to all the dust and rubble. After settling for a long awaited Pizza Express or TGI Fridays found on Google Maps and walking round and round in circles, (literally, the centre has 3 of them) a cabbie kindly told us they no longer existed, KFC here we come. Funny how good some crispy deep-fried chicken can taste when you’re twelve thousand miles from Stacey Bushes.

Next day we submitted documents to the Pakistan Embassy for our visas, not before a trip to the British embassy for a letter of no objection, (this is commonplace when visiting a country that is a little unstable as the country you want to visit doesn’t want to take responsibility for you) nice little racket they’re running there at £60 a go. A few scary moments and an invite to interview later we found we would be stuck in the city for over a week probably as the issuing officer was out of town but at least the interview was just a formality. Time to find new digs. Realising the nightmare of locating good value, close-by accommodation, we enlisted the help of a tour operator and they found us a brand new build near the Main Bazaar for almost half the price, good job, as I need some new jeans and knickers.