Last Day in India

Wednesday, November 24.

Today is our last day in India. Our flight is scheduled to leave at 11:35 pm from Indira Gandhi International Airport. Even though the Guest House is literally under the arrival path to the airport, we must allow 1 hour to get there so that we will be 3 hours early for our flight. So we will bid farewell to our hosts here at 7:30, missing our 8:30 dinner. But if the flight out is anything like the one in, we will be stuffed with food shortly after departure! Our driver will get us safely inside the airport as far as he can take us; then we will really say goodbye to the good people who have done so much to make our stay easy and happy.

Our Room 1st Floor Main House

Today is a lazy day. We have seen and done about everything we can in such a short visit. We will go out for a short time this afternoon, but otherwise we are just taking it easy. We are all packed up and Pati is napping. The Wifi is down, due to a short rain shower this morning. If it doesn't come back, then this will be posted tomorrow.

We are the only guests here today. The guests in the next room left for the airport at 5 am this morning for Kerala in the south of India, to spend 2 weeks on the beach. Tomorrow and the next day they will have a full house, renting all their rooms to a local wedding party.

Our Room Behind Main House and Steps to Room Above

Library

The Guest House has 5 rooms they rent in addition to their private rooms on the second floor. Each rented room has 2 single or full size beds. One of the rooms is on the first floor of the main house; we stayed there our first night before going on the Golden Triangle tour. There is another building behind the main house, with two large rooms and a library on the lower floor and a small charming room reached by outside stairs up above. For the last week, we have been in one of the downstairs rooms. Before that, we spent one night in the upstairs room when we got back from the Triangle Tour. (The couple that was booked into the upstairs room couldn't navigate the stairs, so we traded rooms for a night.) The 5th room, we are told, is just inside the front gate, but we really can't figure out where it is, since there doesn't seem to be enough room from the outside for a room to be on the inside!

We are fed three delicious meals a day, at 8:30am, 1:30pm, and 7:30 pm. We guests take our meals together family style in a large dining room in the main house. From the windows of our current room, we can watch the cook work all day in the large kitchen.

The house has a staff of 10. In addition to the 4 drivers, there is a guard always at the gate, the cook, a nanny for the 2 children, a gardener (who sweeps the yard), a young woman who cleans and does laundry, and a woman who cleans the bathrooms.

The family that lives here includes the owner and his wife, their son and his wife, and 2 grandchildren (8.5 year-old boy and 5 year-old girl). We have seen the father once to say hello and the son once to present our passports and sign the guest register. The children play in the yard sometimes but spend their evenings in the family quarters. The boy is very proud of his razor scooter. The women really run the house and make all the arrangements for their guests.

This Guest House will be our first choice of a place to stay if (when!) we return to India. When Pati awoke from his nap, he started reading planning guides for trips to India!

Location:New Delhi, India