This taxi though. The driver was typical at first, not allowing us to carry our bags to the car. But he then proceeded to pack the small bags first and stuffed the three of us with two large suitcases in the car. Uncomfortable didn’t begin to describe it. We left and he began to discuss a price of 1300 rupees. We began to question this since until now our arranged taxi were prepaid. We offered to call our friend just to double check after which he stopped the taxi and disappeared to… somewhere. This was not an unusual occurrence but he didn’t seem to come back in a timely manner after we confirmed we still had to pay.
We were a little annoyed so we gave a short honk to no avail. Then we just kept the horn going until he quickly showed up.
We were not making friends. But he seemed to dislike us to begin with with his horrible packing skills and strange attitude.
The drive was the worst we ever had here in India. It was dark and he drove fast over those terrible roads, passing other vehicles.
It’s normal for taxi to drive fast on terrible roads and passing vehicles, but this felt more careless where the drivers usually stayed calm and calculating.
Thankfully we survived that and we arrived at Kotayya Camp.
We immediately were dropped of at the location where the first reception would take place the next day. There were two big hallways, one had a big podium and several hundreds of chairs, the other was used for cooking and dining. In the kitchen people were already hard at work for preparations for tomorrow. They even made us some dinner, consisting of roti with a delicious vegetarion curry, since we were starting to get a bit hungry
Next we were brought to our hotel in a nearby place Gangawati where we apparently there was a small bachelor-like party were the groom and friends were present. (Luckily Rhonja was also allowed there). We had some drinks and laughs, also were offered loads of snacks which we unfortunately had to turn down because we were stuffed. Afterwards we went to bed to get a little bit of rest for the reception tomorrow!