One of the reasons I love India? I saw this reminder on a bus shelter…‘Respect and love the elderly’.

Amen! Once more with feeling, AMEN!

Given how swollen and stumpy my feet and legs felt by the time I got here, I felt very much in favour of being treated with love and respect…

I arrived in that timeless fog that endless hours in the purgatory of gates and departure lounges can create.  Time become elastic, and if my watch had started spinning backwards, it would have been no less strange than eating breakfast at 2 am, or dinner at 8 in the morning. Clocks ceased to have any meaning at all. Quite frankly, I quite love the vagueness it creates. Haven’t quite decided why that is…

But landing in Delhi in my semi-somnolent state,  I wondered if something had gone wrong… the Delhi airport I remembered had been replaced with a shiny new model befitting any modern internationional city.

I realized I was almost disappointed by the lack of chaos and decrepitutde. It’s not like I don’t want them to have something beautiful and functional, but it was so different from the other times I’ve landed, that i found it quite disorienting.

But now I’ve been here one full night, and now that Viola, Karen & Susan have arrived we’ve gone shopping at Greater Kalash and life is good.  We now have our Indian clothes; ready for our next two weeks of ashram life.

And in honour of that forthcoming alcohol-free, meat-free life at the ashram? We have just finished a five-course dinner with wine-pairings that was beyond magnificent.

If you are ever in Delhi…Book in to The Manor and make sure you eat in their restaurant. The food is divine.

Don’t book in here for the advertised free Wi-Fi…mostly, it doesn’t work. But the elegant rooms and the exquisite food more than makes up for that.