Adventuring

What a day, what a day! We started our day out as normal…7:30am wakeup for chai and the cleaning lady…yes she come on weekends too! I always feel so bad when she comes because once we wake up I chill in bed Skyping while she sweeps- and when you smile at her she just stares at you and keeps on going. I actually drank my chai today too! Hopefully the more I drink it, the more I’ll like it and it will be easier to drink! After hanging out we ventured to the Sipra Mall in hopes of getting cell phones since we had the info of a contact here (which we found out last week is needed to get a cell if you are a foreigner), we get there to find out that not only do we need that but we also need two passport sized photos and a letter on Drishtee letterhead saying that we are working for them…I swear they should be Commies for how much red tape and requirements there are! China was infinitely easier to deal with- you walk in, buy your phone and walk out! So we grabbed lunch at Kennucky Fried Chicken (KFC for those who don’t know Kris)…the smallest meal I’ve ever seen buuut it was food and only about $2 so who can really complain!? We had quite the adventure getting a cab into Delhi, after no luck, we had to take a motor rickshaw or as we affectionately call them: auto rickies. This wouldn’t be a big deal if it wasn’t about a 45min ride w/no traffic and it wasn’t 110F outside! By the time we got to the hotel, we were all soaked in sweat, coughing up lord knows what after inhaling so much smog from the cars around us…once we arrived they greeted us with cold water (thank God!)- we vegged out in the room for a bit enjoying the AC!

After relaxing for a bit and letting our sweat soaked clothes dry a bit, we headed out for what turned out to be an indescribably crazy/fun/sad/hot/dirty/amazing day all wrapped into one. 1^st stop was the Red Fort- this place is AMAZING!!! TONS of history in it and well if I think it is interesting then it has to be since I am sooo not a history person! Best of all was seeing my 1^st chipmunk ever…SO cute! Apparently this place is where Ghandi was assassinated. This place is so insanely gorgeous…everything is marble and intricately carded and inlayed…basically no words, nor pictures can really capture how gorgeous it is! At this place we were also celebrities of sorts. We had about a million people ask to take pictures with us and about a million more just take them. But best picture of all was Sadie and myself with one of the guards posing with his big gun…my idea naturally to want a picture with the man w/the guns!lol I was really surprised when they said yes…he was very excited that we asked if we could lol

2^nd stop of the day a Sikh Temple. This place was gorgeous and quite an experience. We took off our shoes and gave them to the shoe people, rinsed our feet walked up the stairs where they covered our heads for us since we didn’t already have them covered. There were people sitting listening to a leader talking and we walked through with some other people (basically just following the lead of locals), headed outside and got a thumbs up by one of the people that works there. After walking around a bit we decided to head out…it was a little weird walking through their temple not really knowing a ton about their religion or what we should/shouldn’t do.

3^rd stop of the day was the largest Mosque in India…this is where the real adventure/craziness begins. The whole area that we were in is called Chandni Chowk which is a huge market area- VERY dirty, lots of poor people and insanely crowded. So we made our way down the urine smelling streets ( I swear I’ll never get use to how foul some of the streets smell here) to the mosque. People would say “hello” and beam when you said “hello” back. At the steps (and there are a LOT of steps) up to the mosque we saw lost of grossly deformed people begging and about a million more just poor people begging as well. When we got to the top we were lucky to find that we had come just in time because any later and women and foreigners would no longer be allowed in for the night due to evening prayers. We get to the top, take off our shoes, get put into long gown type things and charged R200 for each camera we brought in- and of course as soon as we walk in my camera is deeead so booo to that! Once we walked in a guy was like this way and took us around telling us a little bit about the history. Walking around on the red Indian Marble was HOT! Our feet were on fire; I have no idea how everyone else there was ok! Once we got back outside though, well that was interesting! We were then charged R50 for each robe thing and then the guy who gave us the “tour” wanted R200 each for his tour- which he never said anything about before we got in there. So we gave robe man his money and tour guide R200 for all of us because at this point we started getting swarmed with beggars and just wanted to get out of there asap. Sadie had pulled R10 out to give to the robe man when we were paying but she didn’t need to and slipped her R10 into her pocket…and 30 sec later when she reached for it the beggar that had been behind her had swiped it from her pocket- he was quite the smooth operator! We were quite impressed with how quickly he had pick-pocketed her and she didn’t feel a thing.

After that exciting experience we were so beyond whipped out that we hopped into an auto-rickie and headed back to the hotel…we hopped in and realized we didn’t know what had happened to our paper with the hotel address, couldn’t find it on the map and couldn’t remember the street name to save our lives! Buuuut I remembered that I had the room key in my purse and that they usually have an address on it…thank god this one did buuut for the 1^st time ever the driver actually knew the hotel we were talking about or at least knew what road it would be on (our hotel is on a narrow street with a TON of other hotels) so we were actually ok and didn’t even need the address- seriously it was a big 1^st because getting anywhere here the drivers always have to ask about 10 different people for directions.

The nice thing about this area is that there are a lot of places to eat so we actually had dinner tonight! We ate at a nice restaurant at the hot next door. Reallllly good Indian food!!! All for a huge spluring grand total of about R750 (with tip)…about $15…it is amazing how cheap everything here is!!! I mean China was pretty cheap but India is realllly cheap!

When we finally got back to the hotel and I took off my sandals my feet were BLACK! I was wearing a long skirt all day so I didn’t really see them until that moment and it was filthy! We all were just COVERED in dirt and sweat and Lord knows what else! Before my shower I looked like I had a tan- or that I had developed a dark brown skin tone…after my shower, no more dirt tan and I was back to being very white (I hope I get a real tan at some point here not just a dirt one).

But yeah, what a day, what a day! It was a very interesting day, and tomorrow starts a new adventure and then our weekend will be over, back to the office on Monday. Tuesday should be fun though, Sadie and I are going on a field trip a few hours away to a village that Drishtee works in doing “research”…should be a rough adventure.