Ok, things are moving much faster than my blog. We’ve been in India four days now. The first three were in delhi, which was so crazy and fast paced, each day we came back to the guest house exhausted! But it was amazing and beautiful, the only “sights” we did were the red fort and a very old mosque, but for us of course, everything was a spectacle. Just accomplishing everyday tasks requires so much energy, luckily there are in New Delhi a few chains of cafes which sort of emulate starbucks where we could unwind. So there’s something I learned about myself, in the states I always figured chains were to be avoided if possible, but I really would rather buy antimalarials at a walgreens than a dirty roadside kiosk. So I guess I’m a bourgeous capitalist and I like western marketing strategies, go figure. I’ll check back on that in a three months.
We’ve been getting around mostly by auto-rickshaw, these little yellow and green sort of three wheeled covered motorcyles, which is really fun. Traffic here is a mess, lines and lanes and speed limits dont mean anything, there really arent any rules whatsoever, yet somehow it manages, its a level of chaos that works as long as everyone agrees to it.
We arrived by train today in Agra, which is a pretty awful place in a lot of ways, but which has some of the most dazzling archetectural gems in the country. Tomorrow we’ll go see the Taj Mahal, but today we went to Agra Fort. The fort is now a palace, having been transformed into such by Shah Jahn (Same ruler who built the taj), and is really astounding Mughal archetechture.
After this we’ll be in Varanasi for Dewali, India’s biggest holiday, there will be lanterns floating in the Ganges and fireworks absolutly everywhere! So this first week is a busy, chaotic one. It’s been absolutly amazing, but I’m also looking forward to getting into quieter, smaller cities.
And once again, I reccomend you look at Sanya’s blog, because thats where the pictures are!