Namaste!
After almost 8 hrs unexpectadly in Newark Airport, a 7 hr flight to Frankfurt... missing connections, a quick dash to flight to Munich followed by another 7 hr flight to Delhi (ndb) we arrived bright eyed and semi exhausted to Delhi around 7:30 AM Monday morning... pretty sure a day was missing somewhere in that mix.
Delhi is as cool, colorful, NOISY and completely overwhelming as you might think. Actually puts NY to shame, especially the driving, of all vehicles from bikes to mopeds to tuk tuks to rikshaws to taxis to people playing a deadly game of frogger walking along the street. Makes for A LOT of hoking!
Hotel is awesome and worth the upgrade after our long travels, making a clean, hot shower invaulable. We started out visiting a tomb, which was a beautiful and peaceful garden- jame, you will be proud of our artsy photos.. im just proud that we are actually taking photos. Then a quick tuk tuk over to Old Delhi found us taking a glimpse at the Red Fort (closed on Mon), a beautiful mosque and a sea of markets- like i've never seen before. A solid decision was made to take a lovely bicycle ricksaw guide through the markets- which would have been close to impossible to navigate without- haywire electrical chords, an intense celebration of the MonkeyGod Festival (??) and just the sheer massive massive amount of people EVERYWHERE make it impossible to walk. The most impressive part of this city is the capacity to be surrounded by complete chaos and still feel slightly at peace, very poetic.
Highlights from our day include: being the ONLY white folk, everywhere, sweating and sniffling through every bite of every amazing meal (SPICY!!!), a slight asthma breakdown by Dara in a chili market she was more than excited to go to (fail), experiencing a true traffic jam while surrounded by a bull, chickens, a tiny richshaw packed with school children all eagar to practice english hellos, the specialty markets (invitations, jewlery, spices, silk), jackie's purchase of a sari that she will never wear but claims to want to wear to work functions, and just having an awesome, awestruck, inspiring start to a much needed vacation- wow, we feel so lucky!!
Now, we will pass out asap for an early flight to Varnasi, pending that we actually wake up. That's all the meat from Delhi.
2 comments:
i'm so glad that you two got to experience the MonkeyGod Festival - i've heard no trip to india is complete without seeing it.
otherwise, sounds awesome!
let us know when you find out your indian names. i'm assuming everyone will call dara d-rock, like at home, but i'm interested nonetheless.
nothing like a good old Dara asthma attack to start the day right.....
hope you guys are having a great time, sounds like it so far!!!
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