Farewell to India

Our last day waking up in India, as we're heading home tonight. Our flight is at 3:05 AM, so we’ll take a taxi to the airport around 10 PM since you need to be there about three hours before departure. We still felt like we hadn’t finished shopping, so we hopped into a taxi to the Tibetan market – or so we thought. According to Lonely Planet, this market was one of the best places to shop for Western clothes. There was indeed plenty of clothing, but the vendors weren’t willing to haggle over prices, so we quickly gave up on that place. If you can’t negotiate, the clothes become way too expensive! :) Instead, we took a taxi to Jan Path market, which was supposed to be really close to the Tibetan market. Eight kilometers later, we arrived. We couldn’t believe it took so long, which led to a little argument with the driver. We thought he was trying to rip us off. Time and again, we’ve encountered tourist prices, but this time, we weren’t going to let him get away with it. Luckily, the tourist police happened to be nearby, so they settled our little dispute. It turns out there are actually two Tibetan markets in Delhi, and our first tuk-tuk driver had taken us to the wrong one. We hurried to pay and sneaked away! :) Jan Path market was just the right spot for us. Tons of clothes to buy and plenty of eager sellers! :) Yesterday, we visited Palika Bazaar, which was also a fantastic place to shop, so we headed there afterward. We’ve really gotten into the shopping groove. This time, we came home with two T-shirts for 200 rs total, a wooden mask for 150 rs, a bronze Ganesh mask for 250 rs, two scarves for 80 rs total, and DVD games for 80 rs each. When it was time to pack, we thankfully managed to fit all our many purchases into our backpacks without exceeding the weight limit! :) Our last meal was at the fast-food restaurant Wimpy, after which we returned to the hotel for our luggage, and at 9:30 PM, the taxi came to take us to the airport. It takes about an hour to get from the city center to the airport, where we unfortunately discovered that it’s impossible to enter the terminal until three hours before your flight. For all the passengers flying at night who arrive early, they’ve built a waiting room where it costs 25 rs per person to hang out. Once we finally got into the terminal and checked our bags, we had to stand in line at immigration control, where we waited for about two hours to get to the actual gate for our flight. This meant we had to take turns standing in line while the other shopped for duty-free items. If you wanted to catch your flight on time, you had to get in line at immigration control right away; otherwise, you couldn’t be sure you’d make it to your gate in time – so no time to wander around the duty-free shops! :) Fortunately, we made it through immigration control 50 minutes before our flight departure! :) Boarding was on time, so the flight to Frankfurt took off at 3:05 AM, just as planned.