Subject: Post: <p>Today was spent separately, as the girls had to take a small roundtrip around India. Due to our stupid Jet Airways ticket changes we were pretty much forced to keep the Raipur flights in the itinerary. So, in the morning Iryna and Lyuda departed to the airport, flew to Raipur and then from Raipur to Delhi via Mumbai. Yes, via Mumbai, really useful Mumbai-Raipur-Mumbai trip. I also flew to Delhi in the evening, so we met again at Delhi airport.</p><p>I actually managed to dodge the bullet and just today agree with Jet Airlines that I in fact CAN skip the Raipur-Mumbai flight and fly only from Mumbai to Zurich and Helsinki on Friday. Otherwise I would have had an early morning flight from Raipur to Mumbai and late evening from Mumbai to Zurich. Meaning, I would already have to fly to Raipur on Thursday evening, spend the night there, fly to Mumbai, hang around the city the entire day and then fly home. Damn I'm happy of managing to change that to a simple flight from Delhi to Mumbai and almost directly to Zurich...</p><p>While the girls were taking their merry-go-around I spent the morning sleeping long, having breakfast at Leopold Cafe and then heading to the "Thieves bazaar", a market selling basically anything from car parts to antique furniture. I needed just a power cable to replace a broken one of my camera charger and a power socket splitter, which were easily found. I also choose to have my beard shaved by a small barber shop for 0.6 euros. These guys do shaving the old fashioned way with a knife, which is always a nice luxury to have. :)</p><p>The bazaar area itself was an interesting contrast to the touristic part of South Mumbai. Just a couple of kilometers and we were again way closer to the style of many Middle East countries. Salesman selling everything imagineable on narrow streets, goats roaming in between and a lot of people doing their business. Chaotic and unclean, but still nice. I guess I'm starting to like India, just like I liked Syria, Iraq and other places which India in many things resembles closely.</p><p>After returning back to the hotel I decided to take my first attempt of ordering an Uber taxi to the airport, as the company also operates in India. Uber Black service is supposed to offer luxury cars ranging from premium sedans to big SUVs and the price difference of the Black service is not really notable here. In India the term premium sedan is maybe not exactly at the same level as in many other countries, but the new Nissan Sunny was still a decent option compared to the old and small normal local taxi cars. Otherwise the attempt was not that good. The driver spoke only Hindi, and I mean ONLY Hindi, not a single word of English. Not to mention he did not know the way to the airport.. Well, we navigated there with my cellphone GPS, but a bit more professional driver would maybe have cleared the Mumbai traffic jams a bit faster. Now the ride took almost two hours for the 25 kilometers distance. I'm quite happy I departed well in time. Most of the local taxis don't do any better though, so that's not exactly Uber's fault.</p><p>Upon arriving to Delhi I started looking for Jet Airways counter to finish the flight change with them. Naturally with my luck there was none in the terminal which I had landed to, the counter would be in the international terminal eight kilometers away. And so were the girls, they were also landed to different terminal than we originally thought. Thus begun a small episode to move myself there, and once again I resorted to Uber due to local taxi drivers being just.. assholes. I offered one taxi driver 100 INR to take me there, "no no, it's 8km and besides you are a foreigner".. Yea. Right. Well, I paid some 50 INR to friendly Uber driver, got there, fixed the tickets and departed to Delhi with the girls.</p><p>Before finally ending up to our shit 10 euro hotel we witnessed a really creative attempt of Delhi tourist scams. Trying to cross the main railway station to the other side where our hotel was located we got approached by a guy in civil clothes but with police officer card. He told us the area would require special permit due to some festival, and we could get that for free in tourist office. He bargained a taxi driver to take us there and in the (remote) tourist office we were greeted by a friendly old guy who told us there has been problems in that area due to festival and it in fact was closed. He called the hotel and let Iryna talk with the hotel guys and offered to book us an alternative hotel.</p><p>The thing is.. Naturally the area was not closed, the police officer was not real, neither was the tourist office. And he had not called the hotel but his friend. Too bad for him that we have seen too many creative scam attempts and understood immediately what was the idea of the theatre. Well, it was fun to follow, we thanked for advice and walked to the hotel, which of course was open. Thanks at least for the free taxi ride near to the hotel, bastards.</p> Latitude: Longitude: Security Code:
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