Random Thoughts

Days 5 and 6 The heat continues - it is around 116 degrees Farenheit each day.  We have never in our lives experienced this kind of heat, but the locals consider it normal for this time of year.  It is breaking 100 year records, but they are still outside hauling bricks on their heads, pullings weeds, and doing mason work.  In fact, they still serve you HOT CHAI, which of course, you drink, because it is offered!  (Also, because even if they offered you "iced chai" (is there such a thing??) you couldn't accept it because weak immuned Westerners need to avoid all tap water, including ice, lest they come down with a case of "Delhi Belly"...  We took a train from Agra to the train to Sawai Madhopur.  This was not a super fast brand new train like the one we took before, but a "normal" train.  Well, normal except that our car had some semblance of cooling (not what we would really call "air conditioning" in the USA but it did the trick and t...

India - Days 3 and 4: Days 3 and 4 were spent in Agra and can be described in one word:  GARY.  "Gary" (can this really be his given Indian name??) was our guide in Agra.  We booked our vacation through a travel agent, who made arrangements with an in country Indian travel agent for each city.  This is NOT how we normally travel, we have never used a travel agent before.  It felt so strange (and a bit pretentious...) to us to PAY someone to organize it all.  Plus, normally when we travel we like to do the NON-TOURISTY things, so by booking a "tour" we worried we would be sort of restricted and not get to explore like we like to do. Well, we have now decided that going through an agent in this instance was, for us, probably the right thing to do.  Even LITTLE things - getting from the train station to the hotel - are bizarrely different in India.  On our train ride to Agra we ended up seated by what seemed to be the only other Americans on the...

SO.  MUCH.  HEAT. The locals keep telling us it is indeed HOT, "It reached 44 today!!" they exclaim. Sadly, though we are getting better at figuring out the in-head formula to convert rupees to dollars to have some idea of what we are spending, a formula for converting celcius to farenheit has not been commited to memory.  Note to self:  when we have internet look up that formula!  I know 44 must be over 100 degrees.  In Delhi it is a dry heat and I am sweating like I have never sweat before.  But it is interesting - the sweat doesn't STINK.  Even clothes taken off and dried in the hotel room do not smell sweaty before they are pitched unceremoniously on the DIRTY CLOTHES pile.    At India Gate - boy were we SWEATY!  And how about those HATS, eh?? We had a super busy day on day 2.  In fact, we were so busy that by the end of the day we were EXHAUSTED and bailed out on going to meet some relatives of a friend in D...

Today was our first day in Delhi.  We landed (after a 20 hour trip) at 1:30 am.  After immigration, having been met by guides (and given beautiful lei-sort of necklaces made of orange marigolds!) we were taken to our nice hotel in south Delhi.  Aren't they BEAUTIFUL?  They smell nice, too.  Made it to the hotel!! We have seen movies about India.  We read a bit (not enough) before we came.  But even on the ride to the hotel in darkness it was clear - this place is UNIQUE.  I knew it would be, but I never imagined to be as struck by it all as I am.  So maybe it was the bizarre time zone difference (we are 9.5 hours ahead of USA East Coast Time), maybe it was the weird sleep (some on the plane in uncomfortable positions, then a good sleep at the hotel), or maybe just the newness of it all  - but it hit me.  I mean BOY did it hit me... Most people would look at our agenda for today and then look at what we actually accom...