Day 13

Spending the previous day sleeping was apparently just what the doctor would have ordered, because I woke up feeling almost 100%. Even better, I hadn't even had a thought of using the toilet since I had taken those pills 24 hours before. Of course I'd hardly eaten anything since then either, but at least I had been able to rehydrate myself pretty well. And the hotel had some pretty good Western choices for breakfast (corn flakes seem to be a universal part of hotel breakfasts), so that helped too.

The first task for today was to secure bus tickets for four of us to Jaipur; the rest would be taking a car. Swati and Arjan hopped in one auto-rickshaw while me and Tony hopped in another, with "Bikaner House" being the direction given by Swati to the driver. After some time, we did in fact end up at Bikaner house, but Swati and Arjan were nowhere to be found, and we didn't know where we were supposed to be. We looked all around and were beginning to get a bit worried, but as is usual for India, all it takes is talking with some people on the street and they'll get you where you're going. After several starts and stops, including a few times where the oddly law-abiding rickshaw driver pushed the rickshaw backwards (they don't have a reverse gear), we finally found our friends. Turns out they were probably only 10 degrees of a circle behind us (New Delhi is all about the circles), but we had to go 350 degrees forward to find them.

Beyond that, today's sightseeing involved the Red Fort in Delhi and then a quick swing by the Jami Masjid, the largest mosque in India. Both were interesting, but I think the best part was the short walk between the two, which was some of the busiest and most lively street walking that we've done.

Then it was back to Bikaner House to pick up our bus, which was actually a nicer option than the car, with deep reclining seats and curtained windows so you couldn't waste energy constantly watching the traffic. Though we missed the road rage incident where there driver of our car and another car apparently stopped right in the middle of the highway and nearly came to blows. Ok, maybe it was fine to miss that.

We arrived in Jaipur several hours later as night was falling, had dinner in the rotating restaurant on the top floor of the Om Tower Hotel, tried to crash a teenager's birthday party, but wisely decided to finish off the night with a beer in the bar instead. Still no poop in sight (my own, that is!)