We left the luxury of ‘Four Points’ behind and arrived at the Hotel JP International in Aurangabad to be told that we had been assigned ‘the best room in the house’. We boarded the lift, tired from our journey we thought to flop on the bed for half an hour before going to the ‘rooftop restaurant’.
Our escort opened the door and the bed and room looked like…no, the words escape me. There was great consternation and another key was brought up. I quipped: ‘So we are off to the second best room in the house!’ But I was met with the indignant reply that: ‘No, I am going to clean this room and you will have it in 30 minutes’. We decided to just leave our stuff in the holding room and head for the rooftop.
The rooftop restaurant is a ‘Family Restaurant’, not a ‘Bar’. We have become accustomed to this concept, although in each instance it’s meaning is slightly different. The first time we came across it we couldn’t understand why they were asking us to drink some out of our glass as they tried to empty the bottle. It dawned upon us that, although we were allowed to drink, we weren’t allowed bottles on the table. Mostly, however, it just means they don’t stock beer, but they’ll happily send someone to the nearest off-licence - ‘English Wine Shop’ - and if you estimated your consumption correctly, you’d think it was just like home.
But it wasn’t the beer, it wasn’t the food we ordered, but as I looked at the unusually inky sky, I could just make out Orion. Hazily, not the whole constellation, but definitely Orion. I suddenly realised that this was the first time since we arrived in India that we could actually see the the sky and the stars. Of course, Aurangabad is a big city and the sun sets about 15 minutes early as it descends into the smog. Still, to see the stars again…
