Hotelnet: Tue 23:10

A surprisingly busy day today even though I didn't leave the hotel until after noon.

I had a dhosa for the first time in India before my thali. I've only had a dhosa before at Jimmy Spice's in Solihull so I wasn't too sure what to expect. A dhosa is like a rolled up crispy pancake with a choice of fillings, eg. veg. samosa-type filling, and some thin spicy soup. JS' are maybe 15cm in diameter before being rolled up. I should have gleaned something from the price, it was a third of the cost of the main course and this enormous triangle, at least 30cm to a side, appeared dwarfing the plate it was on. Pretty filling on its own. Then came the thali which is a sort of snack-pot selection of bits and pieces. I didn't finish.

I'd been pestered with rickshaw offers on the way in so was going to give in straight away to the first offer but on the way out all I got was a kid trying to sell dolls -- like puppets, I don't know if it's a Jaipur or a Diwali thing. After failing to get a sale the kid wanted to talk so we chatted for a bit and he wanted to be a tour guide and was selling dolls to help pay for home, family, school fees etc..

As we chatted a rotten-toothed bloke burst in saying that he recognised me from before (although I'm not clear when) and chit-chatted for a while. The kid and I headed off towards Bani Park and my hotel. He was quite keen on offering me some chai and I was equally keen on not accepting. Nine o'clock at night seems to be an odd time to be offering strange people you've just met on the street chai no matter how keen you are to improve your English through conversation. Maybe that's an Indian thing. For the second time today I tried to explain how Westerners might feel adverse to complete strangers offering them stuff.

So I set off again and was stopped by an auto-rickshaw containing three guys who recognised me from before and I they as the one had leaned out of the cabin shouting "I'm very handsome!" earlier in the day before disappearing off. They then proceeded to lark about then get offended when I said I'd had enough as I wasn't sharing the joke. "You don't like us!" No, I'm just not in on your jokes.

They were the fourth or fifth people that had recognised me a second time throughout the day. Clearly I'd made an impression.

I trudged off up the road towards the hotel. At one intersection, I started off tippy-toeing past bodies wrapped in shrouds sleeping on the pavement or in the verge. Having seen some later on, I think these were mostly cycle-rickshaw drivers. I can understand they need to wrap up completely to have any hope of keeping dust and grime off but how you can sleep with that racket (the car and horn noise) next to you I have no idea.

A little further up, as the verge widened into a triangle, potentially of grass, it was hard to see, the ground was covered with blankets and people sleeping in neater rows. This time, not so well wrapped up but I spotted the odd laptop case (probably not containing a laptop) and there were fewer bare limbs on show suggesting a slightly wealthier sleeper-outer. Thirty or forty bodies, maybe. Again, how you can sleep there I don't know. Perhaps it was a known rest stop for buses?

I carried on up the road rather regretting not taking a rickshaw as it was a bit further than I thought. I reached the roundabout near the hotel and was wondering how to spot the side road that leads to the side road containing the hotel when another rickshaw stopped and a I got burble, burble, hotel, burble, bike, burble. Someone recognised me walking in the dark as being at the hotel because of the bike. A free ride as he was going that way. Can't say fairer than that and I coughed up R20 for rescuing me from some side road hell.