Aargh! Longhaul flights are the PITS! Unless you fly first class, but I wasn’t.
Eight hours Cape Town to Dubai, four hours wait in that seething supermarket of excess then three hours to Delhi.
When the plane doors opened my wife, Patricia, and I were hit by 44 degrees C. It was like stepping into a pottery kiln. Our guide Abbas was waiting. ‘The monsoon is late,’ he explained. ‘So it’s too hot.’
We gathered the rest of the group – mostly South Africans and two Germans – and barged into the air-conditioned bus for a ride to the air-conditioned Taj Mahal Hotel. Wow! What a place Indian luxury is the sort that drips with glorious overkill – huge foyers, rich carpets, beautiful art, fruit bowls and flowers, glittering fabrics and a five-stat room.
This evening we bussed around a few Delhi sights – one being a Romanesque Delhi Gate – and pondered the grandness of the remains of the British Raj. Then hit the sack.
