Day 79: November 22. Back to Delhi

We awoke on the bus around 6am, freezing our little butts off. We said bye to Scott, then took a mini taxi (we bargained for a rickshaw, but I guess we got upgraded!) to our hotel in New Delhi. When we were almost there, our driver pulled over and said he couldn't get through the narrow streets, so luckily there 'happened' to be a rickshaw driver there who could get through and would take us the rest of the way for only 20 Rs. We put our foot down. We were cold, exhausted and too wise for this crap so we told the driver that not only had we been taken directly there in a car before, but that unless he took us himself he was not going to see a penny of the 200 Rs we had agreed upon. He thought long and hard (a little too long and hard for us), then finally took us. When we arrived at our hotel, we told him that his behavior was unacceptable, but somehow I don't think he learned his lesson.

We checked into a hotel and waited for our room to be ready by having breakfast on the roof, overlooking the sunrise. Mercifully, it's much much less smoggy now than it was 2 weeks ago. Our lungs are very much relieved.

After a shower and errands, we walked to the metro to head toward the zoo. The metro here is probably safer and cleaner than any other part of the city. You have to go through security (with a thorough frisking) before entering -this time we were thankful we were women because our line was about 30 min shorter than the men's! - and once you get inside, everything looks brand new and clean! It's such a refreshing change! (Karla thinks that there is something fishy going on. Its almost tooo clean).

We got off at our stop and started walking toward the National Zoological Park, passing a giant international trade fair along the way. We turned too early and accidentally found the Craft Museum, which was an outdoor craft market with a small museum attached. It was interesting, and we always love a good market. The only downside was that, as it's Saturday, all of the teenaged boys with nothing to do are out in full force, which means we got a fair amount of harassment and starring.

We finally arrived at the zoo and had lunch outside before venturing in. We were so happy that we got to see some of the animals we'd missed on our safari, such as leopards (who knew they were so big!), jaguars, Asian elephants (which we were immediately able to distinguish from African elephants), and tigers. We were also able to revisit our old friends the Cape buffalo, zebras, simbas and twigas. It felt like home! We were sad though that the rhinos weren't there (someday we will find one!)

Unfortunately, we experienced a fair amount of harassment here too. It sometimes felt like people were more interested in us than the animals! The boys came in big groups, and the better-behaved ones took photos of us (on their film cameras), while the worse-behaved ones shouted and whispered lewd comments at us. It wasn't threatening so much as disheartening to see that this is a culture that not only allows this kind of behavior toward women, but that it's not even seen as problematic. For example, not a single 'adult' came to our rescue when we were clearly being followed by these groups. At least we'd been in India long enough to know how to deal with it.

After we'd gotten our animal-fix, we took the metro back towards our hotel and meandered through the market, looking for last-minute gifts that we needed to pick up. We were fairly successful, taking a short break for dinner, where we made friends with an amiable waiter from Darjeeling. He promised to make the best pot of masala chai ever if we came back for breakfast. We then headed back to our hotel as the shops were closing, ready for bed!
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