(The blog size limits mean I have to split this day into 3 posts) The night was a jet lagged mass of fits and starts of sleep, waking at 11:30, 1:30-3:30 and finally asleep until 6:30. Even so, I awoke on April 7, 2022 full of anticipation for my drive to Samode and the Samode Palace.
Yesterday at the cocktail they mentioned breakfast at the Pullman was good and it was. Besides the crescent roll, which I had to try, I went for a Southern Indian breakfast of dosa, vegable uttapam and fruit. I even risked ice coffee before remembering I shouldn’t trust the ice - we’ll see what happens.
We started on time at 8:30 from the hotel. The trip took about 4 hours and we arrived at the hotel about 12:30.
There were lots of things to look at along the way while we were on the main road. I loved seeing the royal enfield motorcycles - probably the only place left where you can see them. There were cows along the road side - probably more in town than out of town because there are more fields for them to roam outside of Delhi. There were scenes of everyday life peculiar to India - men dousing themselves with water as they performed their daily ablusions, one time near a marble pool, the sari’d women working in the field.
In general there is far less traffic than I’ve experienced in earlier trips. The air quality in Delhi is bad, but not as bad as before covid….yet. I thought the air would get totally clear when we got out of Delhi, but we went from industrial pollution to more of a dessert air quality, namely suspended dust and sand. It was very dry as the rains aren’t due for several months. Still useful to wear a mask to filter the dust and sand and nice not to wear it to filter the pollution.
Our route took us on the main road to Mumbai- the first and most northwestern port. The road goes all the way from Mumbai in the south to Kashmir in the north. As such it is a main trucking route with lots of trucks. We only had about 3 near-misses as trucks threatened to cut us off:)
As we moved into a more agricultural area you could see brick making towers off the road eerily reminiscent of crematoria.
There were women harvesting wheat in the fields dressed in colorful saris - very hard work. There was a large herd of cows through field along side of road.
See part 2
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