I awoke early and took advantage of the rare peace in the hostel to read my book. It was cold but light and everybody else appeared to be asleep. I plodded on with “The Lord of the Rings” until the sun increased in strength and joined George in a clothes-washing session.
We spent the morning changing money and putting in our visa application at the Nepalese Embassy at a cost of 100 Indian Rupees. A quick tour of the underground bazaar beneath Connaught Place was followed by a sunbathing session on the grass above.
I finished reading “The Lord of the Rings” despite interruptions from people offering massages, shoeshine (we were wearing sandals), maps and guidebooks. George is chatting with an old boy about Western sexual morals, or lack of them in the old boys’ eyes – he thought that we lived the Life of Riley in constant sexual ecstasy in Europe!
Another egg curry later we brought in our laundry and set off for the swimming pool where we gained admittance after a spate of paperwork and payment of 20 Indian Rupees. The Olympic size pool was a treat and I managed to labour up and down for 26 lengths of this 50-metre waterway.
George took advantage of the rudimentary weight-lifting facilities in the changing room while I went off to investigate the other 2 pools that we had failed to notice earlier. As I walked out of the dim corridor into the main pool area, I caught my breath in awe at the sight of a vast floodlit arena. I felt insignificant in this vast open space, faced with two magnificent Olympic standard swimming pools.
What I thought was the roof turned out to be the night sky with the stars made invisible by the bright poolside lights. This vast modern amphitheatre was completely at odds with the crude squalor only a few kilometres away in Old Delhi.
We had two drinks breaks on the walk back and I bought “Gorky Park” which is a 1981 crime novel set in the Soviet Union during the Cold War written by American author Martin Cruz Smith. It cost me 10 Indian Rupees and it gave me something to read in our local, the Delhicacy Restaurant. Here we stayed until we were evicted at closing time.
The swim was good exercise and I feel a lot cleaner for it! Back at Ringo’s Guest House the hippies are crawling out of their dark corners in which they dwell during daylight hours. Our dormitory is a cellar with a fan and a fluorescent strip light in which Ringo has crammed 12 beds covering 95% of the floor space. Above the beds a network of clothes lines are heavy with drying towels and garments. The beds are crude wooden frame jobs with woven sisal cords supporting a thin mattress and I fear that they were designed for smaller Indian folk!
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