Day 73 Delhi

2:40 am, hotel Stay Well, New Delhi. Very late. The usual thing finding someplace to stay, but for once, we have shipped up someplace quite nice. With air conditioning. Delhi smells pretty bad - that was my first impression when we got off the bus at the train station carpark a few hours ago. After getting to the hotel a few of us thought it'd be a fine idea to go off and find a pizza place - but we found nothing much except some scary dogs roaming the streets at night.

9:44 am. Hotel lobby. A few people actually want to go climbing! But will have to suffer some faffing first - breakfast (I've had two already - not much else to do whilst waiting); seems impossible to get drinkable coffee here at all: even if I state NO SUGAR they kindly add about a pound of the stuff. Need to get my kit off the truck. The plan is to go climbing in central Delhi, a place called Ramjas rocks - sandstone outcrop about fifty feet high, we think.

11:55 pm. An awesome day's climbing, at Ramjas rocks. Began by getting my kit off the bus at the train station; torrential rain and pedal powered rickshaw back to hotel. Difficult to find in rickshaw, but worth it, despite the monsoon rains. Because of the rain we had to hang about in a local street food place - had lunch. Rain stopped after about an hour, but rock wet and slippery. Began by soloing up a couple of easy routes, K8 was one I recall on the lower set of slabs. As the day went on, things dried up quite reasonably. Led an old peg route up the back slabs (14), damp. About 6a French, one lovely, lovely move...Sophie led sloping slab number 21, then I led R14, easy but worth doing. All these numbers etc were painted on the rocks. Led right hand variant of 14 (arete), got stung by something - maybe an ant? or possibly the leaves of the bush growing out of the corner on the route. Got rickshaw back. Celebrated at TGI's Friday - burger, chips etc for supper - having managed to escape some of the other Hot Rockers...