2010-11-14 28 77

The Place

Who Went

Felix Dance - by public transport.

Expedition

Felix Dance

This geohash was so easy I completed it almost as an automaton. I found out about it the night before while writing my blog, and also discovered it was quite close to a metro station. Really I had no excuse.

So the next day I ran down to the internet cafe to check I'd indeed got the right dates and coordinates, spent a couple of hours involved in a long Skype conversation with my former housemate and excellent friend Tim back in Melbourne, and then headed off to my nearest metro station: Ramakrishna Ashram Marg.

This metro trip, involving two trains, was mysteriously packed for a weekend. I cocooned myself from the chaos, however, by plugging myself into my ipod and listening to the sonics of such excellent podcasts as Late Night Live, Astronomycast, The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe and the Science Fiction Book Review Podcast. In fact I basically listened to these podcasts continuously throughout the entire day's geohash.

Alighting from the train I was only 1.4 kms from the hash location, and, nibbling on a honey peanut disc, I ambled along the dusty Delhi streets, through barbed wire fences and eventually into the rocky land of abandoned quarries to the hash. The actual exact spot of the geohash was at the bottom of one of these abandoned quarries so I had to some tricky downclimbing to reach it, but other than that this geohash's attainment was pretty damned straight-forward.

Taking some photos of myself and the surrounding area I re-emerged from my pit and clambered back to the metro station for my return. On the way home I stopped to check out a nearby tourist attraction I'd been meaning to see: the Qutab Minar, a stone spire from the Mughal era.

After dithering about paying the exhorbitant 250 Rps fee for entry, during which time I was hit from behind by a bus (but survived), I eventually discovered that my Red Fort ticket from a previous day looked close enough to a Qutab Minar ticket to get me in for free, just as the sun had set. All moral revulsion at this sneaky, yet successful, gambit to be directed as abuse on the Discussion page, please.

Time of hash: 3:35pm
Total time for geohash: 4 hours, including the Qutab Minar on the return journey.