June 9 Day 114
We woke up and found out that our flight had been delayed and so took our time. Back on went the backpacks and we had a short walk to the metro station with relatively few touts pretending to help us.
By the ticket machines were helpers. Ours got us a cheap ticket to the next station but told us we had to buy another ticket there. The connection to the airport line was long but the machine quickly gave us a ticket and the train showed up quickly. It was like the Toronto airport train, with many seats and a big baggage compartment.
Delhi airport brags that it won best airport in the world in 2017 on numerous posters. It's a nice, new space and not crowded, but it couldn't protect us from Air India. The boarding pass machines were quick and easy but the line to drop your bags off was painfully slow and the desks understaffed. After waiting 45 minutes with an hour before our flight I asked the guy managing the line how long before the flight leaves do they stop accepting bags. Either through lack of comprehension of obstinacy he refused to answer my question and asked to see my papers or talked about something else. When I persisted and asked him why he was refusing to answer me he said he'd talk to his boss and then waved us to a desk in front of the other passengers. I was surprised that they didn't follow the same strategy once they saw our results.
Our tickets said there was only a snack on our 90 minute flight so we found some samosas which were good but came with sweet mayonnaisey dips which weren't. On the plane Meg took a video of the other passengers actively ignoring the safety demonstration but the stewardess asked her to delete it.
Lunch was no snack, it was a full meal and so we were properly stuffed. As we came into Gaya, the land from the window was chopped into rectangles as most agricultural land is. Maybe 10 percent of these sections were green and the rest brown and at least three dry riverbeds, one quite large, were passed over. Gaya was obviously needing the monsoons to come quickly.
Our bags popped out almost immediately once we wove our way through the airport, which was decorated with large pictures depicting Buddhist history and practices. Our driver had our names and two people wearing lanyards who seemed to know him followed him to our cars and lifted our bags to the trunk from the cart our driver was pushing. For this 2 seconds or unrequested "help" they began to aggressively demand tips, and since we weren't biting the driver tossed them a few coins.
The drive was quick with the traffic not comparing to Delhi. Our driver was visibly glad to be tipped, probably worried about being short because of the tout money. Rahul, who owned the guest house where we were staying, was inviting and our air conditioned room was clean but on the third floor, so a bit of a trek for us.
We settled in and waited until late afternoon for some of the heat to wane. We walked to the central temple, which was only about 5 minutes. We had offers of bodhi leaves and a tour but said we were just orienting ourselves. We poked around a bit more and then headed back to a recommended restaurant close to us.
We were the only ones in the restaurant and they turned on a big AC fan next to us once we were seated. Meg tried to order one of the house specials but they said it would take too long to cook. The stuff we did order took a solid 30 minutes and Meg's vegetable curry was tepid, which worried us. The food was decent, in not great.
We had been warned by several people not to go our after dark in any of the cities we were planning on visiting. It was dark, but we only had a two minute stroll to our guest house and had no problems. We set the alarm for 5:30 to get an early start the next day to beat the heat and went to bed.
We woke up and found out that our flight had been delayed and so took our time. Back on went the backpacks and we had a short walk to the metro station with relatively few touts pretending to help us.
By the ticket machines were helpers. Ours got us a cheap ticket to the next station but told us we had to buy another ticket there. The connection to the airport line was long but the machine quickly gave us a ticket and the train showed up quickly. It was like the Toronto airport train, with many seats and a big baggage compartment.
Delhi airport brags that it won best airport in the world in 2017 on numerous posters. It's a nice, new space and not crowded, but it couldn't protect us from Air India. The boarding pass machines were quick and easy but the line to drop your bags off was painfully slow and the desks understaffed. After waiting 45 minutes with an hour before our flight I asked the guy managing the line how long before the flight leaves do they stop accepting bags. Either through lack of comprehension of obstinacy he refused to answer my question and asked to see my papers or talked about something else. When I persisted and asked him why he was refusing to answer me he said he'd talk to his boss and then waved us to a desk in front of the other passengers. I was surprised that they didn't follow the same strategy once they saw our results.
Our tickets said there was only a snack on our 90 minute flight so we found some samosas which were good but came with sweet mayonnaisey dips which weren't. On the plane Meg took a video of the other passengers actively ignoring the safety demonstration but the stewardess asked her to delete it.
Lunch was no snack, it was a full meal and so we were properly stuffed. As we came into Gaya, the land from the window was chopped into rectangles as most agricultural land is. Maybe 10 percent of these sections were green and the rest brown and at least three dry riverbeds, one quite large, were passed over. Gaya was obviously needing the monsoons to come quickly.
Our bags popped out almost immediately once we wove our way through the airport, which was decorated with large pictures depicting Buddhist history and practices. Our driver had our names and two people wearing lanyards who seemed to know him followed him to our cars and lifted our bags to the trunk from the cart our driver was pushing. For this 2 seconds or unrequested "help" they began to aggressively demand tips, and since we weren't biting the driver tossed them a few coins.
The drive was quick with the traffic not comparing to Delhi. Our driver was visibly glad to be tipped, probably worried about being short because of the tout money. Rahul, who owned the guest house where we were staying, was inviting and our air conditioned room was clean but on the third floor, so a bit of a trek for us.
We settled in and waited until late afternoon for some of the heat to wane. We walked to the central temple, which was only about 5 minutes. We had offers of bodhi leaves and a tour but said we were just orienting ourselves. We poked around a bit more and then headed back to a recommended restaurant close to us.
We were the only ones in the restaurant and they turned on a big AC fan next to us once we were seated. Meg tried to order one of the house specials but they said it would take too long to cook. The stuff we did order took a solid 30 minutes and Meg's vegetable curry was tepid, which worried us. The food was decent, in not great.
We had been warned by several people not to go our after dark in any of the cities we were planning on visiting. It was dark, but we only had a two minute stroll to our guest house and had no problems. We set the alarm for 5:30 to get an early start the next day to beat the heat and went to bed.
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