Last day ...

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Today is our last day in India. We started the day having tea and cakes with our friends. Then, in exchange for last night's noodle cooking lesson we were give a lesson in dosa, samber and tomato chutney. This made a delicious and filling breakfast to prepare us for our journey. A spot of gardening and more tea drinking and then it was time to say a sad farewell. Our friend and his brother in law gave us each a lift, with our bags, on their motorbikes, to the bus stop. We caught a bus to the main bus station and then another bus towards the airport. Some buses in India are free for ladies and the airport bus was one, so the entire journey from our friend's house to the airport cost 37p for about a 2 hour journey. Possibly the cheapest airport transfer ever!

As both buses came as we arrived at the stops (unlike yesterday) we had some time to kill so stopped for some rose milk at the first station and then tea and samosas at a little cafe outside the airport.  We had a look around the local shops and looked at changing our remaining rupees.  Then we headed to the chicken biryani restaurant where you got unlimited biryani rice, sambal and onion riata for 150 rupees, so we filled our bellies with tasty food before heading to the airport.


Having checked in we headed to immigration.  We have never had such a grilling.  It started with how long we had been in  India, where did we go, what jobs did we do and soon progressed onto where did we stay. We explained we stayed in a mix of hotels and with friends.  Eventually the officer returned our passports but kept our boarding passes, handed us a piece of paper and a pen and told us to come back when we had written our full itinerary and where and with whom we stayed.  Back at the desk, more questions about how we knew the people we stayed  with and how we contacted them... We think we eventually established the issue was their system did not show any of the places we had stayed.  It seems all hotels and private residences must complete an online form.  Interesting that even the hotels we had stayed at had not done this, although they all took a copy of our passports for 'registration'.  Eventually we were given our boarding passes back and allowed to continue with our journey with the advice. That should we come to India again we should stay in hotels!!!! The first flight to Singapore was about 20 minutes late and we arrived in Singapore at 4a.m having managed to get a little sleep on the plane.


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