Ramblings in Retirement
March 2010
Home at last!
We set off to the UK on the 6th March and the following day (Sunday) we had a lovely day with the family. We all met together for lunch and caught up with all the news. It was a joy to spend time with Millie and Daisy again and see just how much they have grown in such a short time.
The following day we visited our old! Neighbours to our house in Gildersome and again got all the gossip. It would appear that our tenants are OK and no trouble at all, so we hope they will renew the contract for rental in June.
Later we drove down to Heathrow to start our India Adventure.
We arranged to upgrade to “extra leg room” which was a small blessing as the normal seats looked not much better than Ryanair! Despite being an overnight flight, we slept only fitfully, Penny and I were not particularly impressed with Virgin Atlantic in terms of comfort, service and communication.
Arriving in Delhi we were transported to our hotel (The Lalit) which was first class in all departments. It would take some time to fully describe our holiday so I will make a special supplement in which I can cover all the sights and experiences, so, in this edition of the blog, I will give only a brief outline. As we were dog tired from all the travel we opted out of the organised tour of the “old” city of Delhi and crashed out instead. The following day we visited the New city including India Gate and the Red Fort.

Our next stage was the Taj Mahal
It was truly wondrous, and soon after we visited the Agra Fort. Next day we set off for Fahtepur Sikri which is an abandoned city, spooky but nice, then, boarding a train, we set off for Ranthambore National Park to see the tigers. It was at this stage Penny fell foul of “Delhi Belly” and was confined to the loo/bed. She did not miss much; despite being on two game drives I saw nothing better than I would have seen at Woburn! Our next destination was the pink city of Jaipur (it was just painted pink)! We saw the Amber Fort which was perched high on a hill but we were unable to get an elephant to take us up to it as time did not allow Mind you they were smelly!
We then set off deep into rural Rajasthan to our hotel, Castle Mandawa, this was an old fortress on the “silk road” and the current owner was converting it into a 5 star hotel. We had a delightful evening in very comfortable surroundings and a chance to see some of the old merchant houses. Next stop, back to Delhi overnight and an early morning start to the train station to board the train to Kalka, only 4 hours! Boy, British Rail despite all its faults, is fantastic in comparison; the station was filthy, people sleeping/eating everywhere. Fortunately, we were in “Chair Class” where we had reasonably comfortable seats and air conditioning.
At Kalka we got on to what is known as the “toy train” where space was at a premium and the seats hard. A five hour journey took us to Shimla near the foothills of the Himalayas where the air was very clean and the temperature in the high 20s (unlike Delhi Agra and Jaipur where mid 30s was the norm).
When we arrived at Shimla we went to the Oberoi Cecil Hotel which was truly magnificent and at this point Penny rebelled saying that she did not want any more travelling but rather would like to have some pampering. Massage, facial and manicure were on the agenda while I went off to see the sights. Shimla is the summer capital of India and the whole administration of the government move there. It is also where the partition of India was signed by Lord Mountbatten and I visited the Viceregal Lodge where all this took place. A trip to the Monkey Temple and then to the “famous” mall in Shimla was quite enough for me.
We returned to Delhi once again for an overnight before boarding the plane to return to the UK.

Our return to Spain was marred by a 3 hour delay but thankfully we arrived safe, if not completely exhausted. Our next two days were spent doing absolutely nothing.
The new steps into the pool have been done by our builder and he has made a good job including cleaning of the grout in the tiles. We now are finishing off with painting the surround and then we’ll fill the pool ready for summer.

Within the next week I’ll write a supplement blog all about our experiences in India in some detail, look out for it.