We arrived in Delhi late in the evening and had a good meal at the station restaurant. This meal cost us only one-half the rate listed on the menu card. This pleasing reduction had happened several times before, during our travels in India, but we did not know the reason until the waiter in the Delhi restaurant asked what regiment we belonged to. We had been taken for British soldiers. It seems that in certain cities Tommy Atkins gets a discount of fifty per cent. in all eating places. India is no place for a woollen suit. White linen or duck are the clothes usually worn by foreigners. Richardson and I didn't have the time or the money to have white suits laundered. We solved the problem by wearing khaki with white suits for special occasions. With our khaki suits and brown pith helmets we looked like British soldiers.
In the Delhi restaurant we got a thirty cent meal for fifteen cents. This wasn't a bad beginning for a city in which ten dollars a day was the minimum expense for living. We went out of the station into the darkness of a large park near-by.
"Can you speak English?" said Richardson to the first passer-by. There was no response.
"Hey, there, do you understand English?" I shouted to a group of natives. They looked at me as though I were crazy.
A lone man strutted towards us. He looked like he might know something.
"Where can we find a good cheap hotel?" Richardson asked.
"The Coronation Hotel," the man replied in good English.
"What kind of a joint is it?" I interrupted.
"A good place. Just built for the Durbar."
The native accompanied us to the hotel which was but a short distance away in the business section of Delhi. It was conducted by a Mohammedan and consisted of about twenty rooms on the roof of a large brick building. We were given a compartment which we had to share with two Moslems. We furnished our own bed-clothes, as is the custom in India. The common wash-basin was at the other end of the roof. The hotel's rates were one rupee (thirty-three cents) a day each! The expensiveness of Delhi was a myth.
The city was busy making preparations for the Durbar. Public buildings were being painted; flags were being hung; grand stands erected and streets paved. The Durbar grounds, about five miles from the city, covered hundreds of acres and consisted of thousands of tents which had been pitched to house the various maharajas, rajas and their retinue of attendants. Richardson and I explored the grounds. We visited the large amphitheatre, where King George was to be crowned emperor. It was a large semi-circular wooden building with a throne in the centre. The circle was completed by a mound of earth on which were placed seats. The structure would accommodate about twenty thousand people and the earthen mound would hold about eighty thousand more.