Time up.

Yesterday afternoon's thunder and rain had a reprise first thing. The rain even had chunks of ice in it and drove breakfast indoors. During the last few hours there have been a lot of departures and arrivals, including an American who is a total birding nutter. He has apps to notify him of species seen nearby and a printed list of his target species. He saw the first of them from the plane at Delhi Airport and reckons to have seen 15 of them in LB's garden in a couple of damp hours yesterday. Thank goodness R doesn't have such an obsessive hobby. We also meet an Australian chap who knew about the Royal Geographical Society's exhibition of Indian Narrow Gauge Railway photos that D visited in December 2014. He was involved in something similar as a book lauch in Melbourne.

As creatures of habit we have developed a routine for our last day in India. Hit the spice market in Old Delhi, then refreshments at Haldiram's on Chandni Chowk, a wander up Kinari Bazaar and finish up with some mehendi hand painting for R. We are almost too early this year as a rather muddy spice market is just coming to life but R finds what is required and we are soon on board a cycle rickshaw heading for Haldiram's - downstairs cakes and sweets, upstairs a very Indian fast food place. The big plus is that it has AC and cleanish loos so we pick out a few sweets to bring home and then head upstairs for a lassi. D is required to have his picture taken eating a samosa by one of our wackier readers and this is a good opportunity to deliver.

Kinari Bazaar is just a stream of Western tourists on board cycle rickshaws all filming the back of the rick in front on their mobile phones. A street over from the tourists is the place where R goes for mehendi. There is an Indian lady just having hers finished as R is invited to take a seat on a low plastic stool on the pavement. The young man doing the painting is very skillful, using a finer thread of henna than the lady in Lucknow, and the result is most artistic. We pick our way through the traffic back to Chawri Bazaar metro station.  In Old Delhi the pavement is considered to be a place for doing business.  In addition to the usual vegetable sellers, some one has set up a red hot tandoori oven in the footway and at another point a sheet metal works has spilled out onto the pavement.  We get lucky on the metro and have seats for the trip down to Race Course.

It is time to pack and poor R has developed a cold. We manage to fit it all in and relax with a beer as the sky turns a very nasty colour and a red naped ibis drops in to feed on the lawn. One of the resident dogs eventually takes exception to this intruder and chases it off. Dinner is three Swedes, one Belgian, one Scot, one Yorkshireman and two Dutchies, one of whom is very pregnant. The conversation is wide ranging, taking in sanitary towels, how India has changed in 30 years and how to cure in laws of interfering. We had bought a box of Patisa sweets to hand round and the Dutch lady had a much bigger box of sweets that she did not want to carry home so there were lots of goodies to finish off with. There were flickers of lightning all evening to the south west and a storm broke at 9 pm, just as we retired for the night. Only a few more hours of India left for us this time round.