DAY 102: LEAVING DELHI TO AMRITSAR

Chuck with the presenter from New Delhi TV

We were up early to get to the Iranian embassy in good time to get our Visas. We’ve come to learn that these things always take longer than expected but this place really took the biscuit. We ended up waiting in the embassy all day for a fax to come from Tehran confirming our 30 day tourist Visas. The fax never came so we ended up just applying for a 7 day transit visa instead. This should be sufficient to get us down to Bandar Abbas in Iran to get the car ferry to U.A.E and on towards Oman.

At one point we had a mad scramble when we were given 15 minutes to locate a certain Indian Bank in order to get a bank draft made for the embassy. If we didn’t get this, the embassy would be closed for a whole week due to Iranian holidays. Chuck managed to find the Branch just time to get it sorted and during all the commotion in Delhi’s busy Connaught place, Dave’s white shoes became a victim of the ‘shit-dropping’ scam! This scam involves a stealthy manouvre by a passer-by who drops a lump of crap on your shoe only to disappear instantly, much like a pick-pocketer. This crap-dropper is in fact an accomplice to a show shiner about 20 metres up the road and this is obviously an attempt to generate business. Refusing to be had like this, Dave went to a different shoe-shiner across the road so that the scammer wouldn’t get the business. It’s amazing the lengths these people go to rip you off!

After finally getting our visas and being the last people to leave the embassy, we got ourselves organized and checked out of our hotel. We had received a phonecall earlier in the day from New Delhi TV who wanted to do a piece on the drive so we headed to meet them at the Shangri-La hotel where they shot all the footage and interviewed us on the drive. After this and a quick dinner, it was 11pm by the time we hit the road en route to Amritsar.

As we’ve learned from our time here, driving in India at night is a nightmare. 3 hours into drive, heading north towards Amritsar, Dave started falling asleep so we decided to get stop and get some kip at some strange abandoned waterpark resort near Karnal with no other guests but ourselves.

DAY 102 Routemap: Click for Details