Some Holiday

Day 399
My alarm went off at 6:30 and I had to be out of my room one hour later. I just made it. It doesn't usually take me that long to pack no matter how messy I get, but I was really dragging.

My book didn't mention any good places for breakfast so I decided to try a tea place. I walked for ages and didn't seem to be finding it. After some time I got a tuk tuk. He said that he understood but then attempted to take me to the other side of the river which was where my hotel was and definitely not the right place. When I got him to go the right way I'm pretty sure that he drove me in a circle and that I was only a couple minutes from where I started when he dropped me off. I also couldn't find the place that I wanted, but there was a Barrista coffee shop (Indian version of Starbucks) that would be opening in an hour. I sat for a while outside of a shopping center but eventually the sun began to bother me. I then moved to a place closer to the coffee shop, but people kept asking me for money. I was really happy when it finally opened.

I sat there for quite some time writing in my journal and working on my itinerary. I really didn't want to get behind like I did in SEA again.

After a couple of hours I grabbed a tuk tuk and asked to go to the City Museum. He didn't understand either but asked a few people standing around until he found one that spoke enough English to figure out where I wanted to go. When we finally got there it was closed for some governors birthday or something strange like that.

With nothing to do I walked for a while before finding my lunch destination. I wasn't really hungry but I went inside for a snack and to calm down. I also wrote for a while more. I then headed to the Sidi Saiyad mosque. There was a big sign that women were not welcome, so I took pictures from the outside. A few locals told me to just go in anyway, but I declined.

I had time to kill and no room to chill in so I headed to the internet cafe for a while. This is the only place that I had seen other westerners here. The connection was so slow that I eventually just had to give up and I left. I felt like I should eat before my train, but still wasn't very hungry. I ended up with some cheese naan. This didn't really help me kill a lot of time though.

I decided that the only thing to do was to go to the night market. As this isn't a very touristy town the market must be for locals, but it seemed touristy. Most of the stalls sold brightly colored tops and skirts with mirrors sewn onto them. It's like the type of thing that you could frame on a wall, but people kept trying to sell it to me saying that it would be good to wear to work! Everything was really nicely priced, I could have gotten a queen sized comforter for only $6 without even trying to bargain. There were some guys walking around trying to sell puppets. They tried to get me to buy them for 150 rupees each, but I just walked away. Eventually one guy told me he would sell me one for 20 rupees I was about to just buy the stupid thing to get him to go away, especially if it was going to cost less than fifty cents, but then he raised the price again. About 3 of them followed me around for most of the time I was there, but I just ignored them after that.

I then managed to find one of the few honest tuk tuk drivers, this guy used his meter. I gave him a nice tip and thanked him for being honest. I then hung out at the hotel lobby for a while before heading to the train station.

My non ac sleeper looked just as horrific as I had thought it would be. It was loud and it smelled. I unfolded my bed and got in before anyone could try to use it to put their bags on. I was happy to see that even though there were loud (very loud) kids in my compartment that I was with a family. I thought that there would be less chance of a walk by groping (the compartments are open, not like in Europe) this way. I was even happier when there was an Aussie guy in the bed beneath me, every one would just think that we were together and leave me alone.

I was really glad that I was so exhausted because I would have never slept any other way. As it was, I was out as soon as the train began to move and only woke up when people touched me. It wasn't groping touching, it was people just leaning on my bed instead of sticking to their own.