On a beautiful Thursday we packed our stuff and took tearful farewell of our cool little room, our balcony and the Ganga, and took a bus which transported us to Delhi.
Although I had found some seemingly good hotel in Lonely Planet on the bus, in the end when we arrived and started wandering around in the mess of Pahar Ganj (this is the district where 90% of the travellers stay: shopping street, cheap food and hotels, etc.) and a bum-looking guy found us and said he had a cheap place to stay. We asked how cheap. He said 300. (That's about $6 per day for both of us) We said that's allright, let's take a look. We took a look. Well... Raunchy building, dark, windowless room, basically dirty at every inch, half of the other rooms are such a bad conditions that they cannot even be let out, they are used only for keeping the garbage. One of these out-of-order rooms had a working bathroom (a hole in the ground as a toilet and a cold water tap at waist-height as a shower), it could be used because even though the room we were offered had a bathroom but there was no water in it, just dirt. We didn't think much, it was cheap and we're poor, se we took it. Along with the keys came a joint left there by the previous resident of the room, and also after we told the guy we'd take the room he said "Allright, let it be 250...". So at least it was really cheap :)
We don't have a pic about out room because we didn't dare to take a photo, but in the hallway I took a picture about how greatly the Indian engineers planned the way the rain water should accumulate in the drainpipes just to flow into a vertical pipe and pour down in the hallway just in front of our room, forming a 5-6 cm deep puddle. Awesome.
By the way the neighboring room was not let out because the rain was pouring in there the same way through another pipe.
Taking a shower was especially funny: there was no light in the bathroom, and by the toilet there was a tap with water pouring out of it 24/7. In order to make enough pressure in the "shower" (that other tap at waist-height) there were some plastic bags and pieces of rope applied on the little tap by the toilet, which more or less decreased the amount of water flowing out of it, so this way it was possible to take a "shower" using the other tap. This isolation was sometimes there, sometimes it was taken off, and at times there was no water at all.
When there was water through, it was dirty enough not to see my fingers when I put some water in my palms, and also after taking a shower I was glittering everywhere because there was some glitter (pieces of metal maybe?) in the water :)
By the end of our stay we even got some louse so I got rid of my beard which had been growing for 3 months, and some of my hair. Click on the picture for shaving me.
Finally we got rid of these lovely little animals quite easily: we bought some special shampoo which washed them away and that was about it. But still it was an exciting time. For sure this was the shittiest place we stayed on our trip :)
I'll tell you more about our further adventures in Delhi tomorrow.
