Grand Adventure 2017 Day 26: The Conclusion
We’ve reached our last day of the Grand Adventure. I cannot believe that twenty-five days have already passed and we’re on our last day here in New Delhi. But I’ll leave the recap of the trip for a different time, we had one full day left in New Delhi to enjoy the beautiful city.
We didn’t have any tours or anything on the books today so we had a leisurely morning. We spent a bunch of time lying around and resting up. I wanted to go for a run but the smog is so bad here, even in the hotel, I decided against it. We ended up going down for breakfast at 9 AM to a packed restaurant. We lucked out and got a table and enjoyed a feast of a breakfast. Jenn just went to the American breakfast with eggs bacon and sausage. I wanted to get us some items to try so I had two Indian dishes brought out to us. One was a croissant with a chicken curry filling that was great. The highlight though was these fluffy pieces of bread that you could put a potato curry in that we both loved.
After we stuffed our faces with our last breakfast at the hotel we went back to our room, got changed and went back out. We needed one more mug to complete our Grand Adventure collection so we got an Uber to take us to one only a couple miles away. The Starbucks was in this random shopping center that had we not known a Starbucks was at we would have never gone to it. Luckily we found the Starbucks and got an India mug along with a hot chocolate for Jenn. We hung out at the Starbucks for an hour and enjoyed the nice quiet upstairs lounge.
A little after 11 AM we left Starbucks and got another Uber to take us to the one tourist activity we wanted to do today, Lodhi Garden. It’s a beautiful park a mile from our hotel that both our driver yesterday, and our tour guide two days ago said was worth going to. I’m glad we did, there are a couple of tombs at the park along with just a beautiful park and garden. It reminded a little of Central Park in New York. When we were there we watched a cricket match being played (I’m fascinated in that sport) and a ton of couples getting engagement photos taken. We even stopped and marveled at some Peacocks roaming freely. We only spent an hour at the park as the smog was exceptionally bad today and it was getting both of us a little queasy.
We grabbed another Uber to take us back to our hotel. When we got back we watched Patton Oswalts amazing stand up special on Netflix and watched CNN to catch up on the latest Trump disasters. Later in the afternoon, I threw my swim trunks on and enjoyed our private plunge pool which was perfectly heated and just big enough to swim around and relax. I’m still blown away that it isn’t sweltering outside. Instead, it’s been in the high 70’s during the day and the 50’s at night. We laid around most of the afternoon and towards the evening began packing for our trip home.
Because today was our last day in India we wanted to make sure we got one last Indian feast in before we left. We thought about trying somewhere new but with a flight this evening to take us home we didn’t want to risk it. Instead, we went back to the same restaurant, Gulati, that we went to a couple days back. We got there with our Uber a little after 5 PM and got almost the exact table we had two days ago. We ordered butter chicken, curry mutton, garlic naan, and rice. Everything was still just as delicious as last time, and the lamb was even better than their chicken tikka masala. We came very close to finishing off everything before leaving and heading back to our hotel.
Tomorrow we have a flight at 12:45 AM (so basically tonight) to take us to Toronto and then home. When we got back from dinner we both took showers, finished packing, and relaxed while we waited for our driver to take us to the airport at 9:30 PM. We left the hotel at 9:30 PM and were dropped off at the airport at 10:15 PM. There we met up with a hotel rep to help us deal with the weird India security. There are security guards who check your info at least four times before you get to the airport terminal. We were fortunate to have premium economy seats so skipped a massive line at Air Canada and an hour later we were through customs and security.
We spent the rest of our final day in New Delhi in the ITC Hotels Lounge where we hunkered down and waited for our fifteen-hour flight to Toronto. And thus, ended our final day of the trip. We did everything we could to soak in the last moments of vacation before boarding our flight to take us home. It’s been quite the journey over the last twenty-six days. Now is not the time to try and recap the entire trip. I will say this as I close out this Grand Adventure, no matter what trips we take in our lifetime, I don’t see how this Grand Adventure will not be one we’re talking about for the rest of our lives. We came in with our eyes wide open and left with our hearts full.
