Today, we left Amritsar to fly back to Delhi.
When I got up today, I packed, had breakfast and went to look in the hotel gift shop. I saw a carved wooden elephant that I liked, and as I had some Indian rupees left, I bought a medium-sized one to take home with me. As I sat in the hotel lobby waiting to leave Amritsar, some of my travelling companions saw the elephant and liked it enough to go and buy one of their own. I wish I had been on commission, I would have done very well.
Today was a day of travelling, delays and cock ups by the JustYou staff, and hotel staff alike. Unfortunately for us, the tour guide who had been with us since we arrived in India had a family emergency and had to leave us. We were given a new guide who was supposed to take us from the hotel to our flight to Delhi. Things did not work out that easily either in Amritsar or in Delhi.
Amritsar Airport.
We were taken to the airport by coach along with our new guide, who, once we were outside the airport terminal, told us that he wouldn't be coming into the terminal with us and gave us our tickets outside, where we had to queue to go through screening to get into the airport. Unfortunately for us, the screening machines were not working properly. Some wouldn't scan the airline ticket correctly, others wouldn't scan our passports correctly, and others wouldn't scan us for the facial recognition software properly. This caused a lot of confusion and worry for our party, as some of us sailed through and others were held up, while other machines were used to scan documents and ourselves.
Eventually, we got to the airport, where our tour guide reappeared and helped us check in for the flight before leaving us again. When we all had our tickets, we had to then go through yet more security. This time, we were separated into queues for men and women as we were all scanned, and our carry-on bags were all scanned again. This seemed to take forever as some of the overly efficient security guards removed every single item from our bags and took anything that would come apart, apart, before handing it back to us to sort out. Once through and into the airport, we found a cafe to get a drink before heading to the gate, the airport departure boards said we had to leave from.
Because I was moving slowly, I went ahead to the gate with a couple of the ladies I was travelling with, only to find when we got there that the gate had been changed and that we had to go somewhere else. We walked back to the cafe, told anyone we could see from the tour about the change, and made our way to the new gate to wait for our flight. Thankfully, we had no more problems at the gate, and we boarded the flight to Delhi.
Delhi Airport.
The flight to Delhi was comfortable, and there were no more delays. When we left the plane, we all waited until we were all together, collected our luggage, and then made our way to the muster point where JustYou had said our new guide would meet us. We waited and waited, and after calling JustYou and the hotel we were going to be staying in several times, the guide turned up, over an hour late.
Tourists sat at a long table.We were then driven through Delhi to the hotel where we were staying. Strangely, when we arrived, instead of being given our room keys, we were led into a convention room and sat at a long table. We thought that perhaps we were being given dinner, but we weren't. A group of waiters appeared with beer and wine for us. Then four hotel representatives appeared to apologise and told us that there had been a problem at the hotel since our stay only a few weeks ago, taht many of the rooms were no longer available as part of the hotel had to close and that the hotel wasn't able to put us up and that we were going to be transferred to another hotel.
After a long wait, we were led back to the entrance of the hotel, where we had to claim our cases that had been stored there since we left to go to Amritsar. Another coach arrived, and our luggage and we were once again transferred on a long trip through Delhi at rush hour, to another hotel.
I can't remember much about the hotel where we spent our last night. It was pretty nice, but I was kept awake by a wedding ceremony outside my hotel room until around midnight.