Tagne 2001

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Dan's Diary

Day 44 - Friday 10th August 2001

Our hotel, The Park

We made it up by around 9:15am after Andy phoned across from next door to make sure we were awake. We all went down to the restaurant and were asked to wait as there were no tables available. Shortly afterwards, we were shown to a table and invited to help ourselves to the breakfast buffet. Everything was there: eggs, bacon, tomato, cheese, sliced meat, toast, cereal, yoghurt, fruit, milkshake, fruit juice, tea, coffee - you name it, it was there. We stayed until the buffet shut at 10:30am, eating as much as we could and then a bit more. After breakfast we returned to our room and lay on our beds watching a replay of England losing to Sri Lanka at cricket on television. Alan and Steve took it in turns to play about with the speed setting of the ceiling fan.

The doorbell went at 2:30pm. No one could be bothered or could summon up the energy to move from their comfortable position to answer the door. After some time passed Alan gave in and left his bed to open the door. It was Andy. He wanted someone to go with him to pay the IMF but we all had other ideas. After a long debate about why each one of us should or should not accompany him, he gave up and took Jon with him.

The phone rang at 4pm. Alan answered it reluctantly to find an Eco-rep on the other end of the line asking where Andy is. Alan told him, he was on his way and should be there at any minute. I packed the kit bags so that they were ready for the plane home, taking out the lighters we had left over.

Alan waits for his shirt to dry

Andy and Jon returned at 5:30pm and told us of their little adventure. Apparently there was an auto-rickshaw strike over a compulsory change to natural gas and there being only a few filling stations, which had inevitably led to long queues. The few auto-rickshaws that were running were therefore charging extortionate fares so Jon and Andy ended getting a taxi for 500Rs. Andy also told us that Colonel Singh had invited us back to the Gymkhana club, and that the same taxi would take us there at 6:30pm and bring us back at no extra charge. I was dubious but it turned out they hadn't paid the taxi driver, so if he wanted his money he would have to keep to his commitment. We were soon faced with a familiar problem - we had been invited to the oldest and most prestigious club in Delhi and yet we had no clean clothes to wear and were leaving in an hour. Alan and Steve set about washing their shirts in the washbasin. This might clean them but I was sceptical about wearing a wet shirt. However they pointed out that they would soon dry in the air conditioning. Alan found a coat hanger, hung his shirt on the ceiling fan and then turned up the speed so it had a spin-dry. Steve soon added his shirt and before long drips of water started to fly off around the room. After a while Steve realised the shirts weren't going to get any drier on the fan, so he opted for the hairdryer in the bathroom.

Come 6:30pm we were all ready, Alan and Steve with slightly damp shirts. But after going to get Andy and Jon from their room we discovered that we weren't leaving until 6:45pm, they had just told us 6:30pm so that we would be ready on time. Some fifteen minutes later we all went downstairs to the lobby and out into the humid air. The doorman called our taxi for us, number 5820 and before we had a chance to look around the white car pulled up and we all jumped in. We were driven to the club where we were invited to wait in the reception. Ten minutes later David Singh and his father arrived. After greetings they led us into the air conditioned bar where we sat and talked about our expedition while emptying many glasses of beer and clearing platefuls of nibbles including chicken, nuts and kebabs. Other topics of interest were the accident with the horseman and the future for the members of the team regarding expeditions and jobs. An artist friend of David Singh's joined us midway through the evening and entered into the topic of conversation.

At around 10pm Colonel Singh took us to the club dining room where we ordered curry. I had chicken with rice and naan and a crème caramel for pudding. It was all very nice but we were the last in the restaurant and we had to leave sharpish as they wanted to shut up. Colonel Singh escorted us back to the front door where he made sure we got our taxi. It was a bit touch and go as there seemed to be no cars left in the car park but after calling the number 5820 out using the louder speaker system, the taxi turned up. We thanked David Singh and his father for all they had done and left, taking the taxi back to the hotel. We paid the taxi driver, appreciating his kindness in waiting so long for us, before returning to our rooms to sleep.