DELHI Out Of India

Monday, 9 March 2020

After 160 fun-packed days we are back in Delhi for a final 72 Indian hours before flying off to Nepal, hopefully for something completely different.

Our picture shows some of the sophisticated people we can expect to see in the Hotel Tourist Deluxe restaurant.

As we jumped in the tuktuk at the railway station we congratulated each other on completing a very tough circuit of this insane country.

It's far too big to be one country and is still basically the "united states" that Partition wrangled together, making it slightly easier to comprehend. It seems to work, but only just. Keeping one point four billion people pointing generally in the same direction is one hell of a balancing act.

A fairytale religion keeps the population sated and pliable, the caste system seems to do most of the expectation management.

India has been hard work for us a lot of the time, it's very difficult to understand and negotiate, but it has given us a thousand memories, some "Amaaaaazing!", some "Wow!", lots just "Aaaarggh for ****** sake!!".

We shook hands on a job well done, that India hadn't defeated us and that we hadn't killed each other.

Result.