Day 117 Friday 12 January 2007 Delhi

Visited a travel agent in Connaught Place and the Cottage Industries Emporium, marvelling at both the handicrafts, which range from inlaid marble and woodwork to beautiful carpets, bedspreads and leatherwork, as well as India’s amazing ability to render simple processes as complicated and bureaucratic as imaginable. The pinnacle of Indian civilisation, the result of thousands of years of practice and refinement is manifest in its form-filling in triplicate and its systems involving 3 times as many steps as anywhere else, whether its to get a visa, book a train ticket, get on an aeroplane or in the current case to buy a marble inlaid elephant.
Its too soon to immerse ourselves back into India so we have cappuccinos at Barista and pizza and pasta at Ego in New Friends Colony.