Since breakfast,

This morning, we were given an award from the staff for "Best Dance Group" (which is achieved by dancing as opposed to vaguely swaying as most of the other people on the flo were doing). Good start to the day.

Goodbye, dear hotel staff that wait on us hand and foot.
Goodbye, western food (OH NO).
Goodbye, great internet service!
Goodbye, great strange waiting for the elevator music... I may miss you the most.

Update: Courtney and I have been illicitly brushing our teeth with the tap water instead of bottled water in an attempt to acclimate more quickly (come on, it's a Hilton). We are not sick. Just sayin'. 

Step 4: Take a Breath

TODAY

Ruins--> great. Good history, funny little boys, and greatly decreased staring. Muy bonita. I was pleased to be surrounded by foliage instead of nonstop people and horns (except for Brenna, naturally). The day was just like chill chill chill mega-chill.

As you may be aware, that whole New Year's thing was a-happenin'. What that means is we can't really go out because Delhi is far too crazy for the likes of us, so we avoided the 100USD party our hotel was throwing, bought sparkling juices (including lychee), and played games in a hotel room. But in a shocking twist of events, Kingshuk informs us like two minutes after midnight that the dance party is in fact open to us! Americans take over the dance floor, bewilder the masses, and entice the occasional bold Indian to dance in the middle of our circle. Our dance floor domination concludes with a congo line to the elevator to Li'l Jon's "Shots".

 Probably a good thing we leave tomorrow. 

Step 3: The Real Deal

Okay, sorry for all these huge posts. It's not that I think you NEED to know every single detail... It's just that, well... I want you to.

After our pleasant first day of being touristy, we kicked it up a notch in the grittier, less prettier old Delhi. Okay, qualifier: that is true in general, but we actually started with a red-colored fort that is very significant to India's heritage, called the "Red Fort." We learned some stuff about the Mughal kings that built it and the British kicking them out, but if you'd like to know more, please check your local library! Or google it, whatevs. After being mobbed by adorable Asians who were over the moon that we, fellow tourists, would deign to take a picture with them, we started our tour. We had an awesome guide, so awesome that some dudes started merging into our relatively small, relatively white group and hopping on our tour. I mean, it would have been fine, but the constant staring and taking pictures of us were detrimental to our educational experience so our guide told them to go away. Those guys, huh? Can't get enough of us!

Great fortitude

After a fair degree of tranquility in the fort, we entered the real world. Old Delhi b cRaZy. There are market areas with narrow streets that individually specialize in just about everything (car parts, wedding lace, jewelry, etc) and we marched single file down them. They were packed to the maxxx: envision a street about six feet wide with tons of people, motorcycles, rickshaws, and carts barreling through opposite directions at breakneck speed. It was a fun and challenging game of follow the leader knowing that if you got separated, you would never ever find your way out yourself, you had no phone, you wouldn't really know who to call anyway, and you don't speak the language. Not to mention the usual foreigner in a big city danger... But isn't risk what makes it fun?

AHHHHH

We finally made it out of that labyrinth and onto the crowded main roads, past a mosque. Though because it was Friday we couldn't go inside to see to look around, we still got to see the demonstration of Muslims praying out on the front steps. The pray-cry-song echoed from huge speakers and was incredibly beautiful and eerie. We all want to repeat that experience. The neighborhoods surrounding the mosque were primarily Muslim, and I felt very exposed in my jeans, loose t-shirt, and hair down when walking past women looking fresh in their burkas (but seriously, if I go back there, I feel like I should cover my hair or something).

We were brought to a restaurant that was supposed to be some of the best Muslim food in the city. We got some chicken that was not spicy for every else in the group, but somehow still turned me red with full on watering eyes. Talk about EmBaRrAsSiNg!

Final notes of the day:

-When we were packing, Sucharita warned us it was going to be flipping freezing because even though it's India, it's still winter! WRONG. It's just India. Everyone else is walking around bundled up while we're mostly wearing t-shirts (side note: there was a cold front going through India, killing hundreds of people. Indians don't heat their homes). What winter does in fact mean for them is fog/smog. It's partially pollution, partially mist, but either way it makes everything super dreamy and ethereal, which is pretty, and destroys proper long distance camera shots. 

-An odd thing we've been noticing today is the male to female ration around here... It's crazy off. Some places are more equal (the mall, go figure) but the workers at our hotel and people in the street mostly appear to be male. For example, today on a very crowded street, Adam and I counted women. FOUR. 

-Gulab jamun. Go eat it now.

Lylas,

Reetz

Step 2: Initial Forays

The adventurous portion of our day starts a little after noon when we are loaded on the same bus from the night before. This is our first venture into India and boy, are we ever excited! We drive around and have one of Sucharita's friends be our tour guide driving through the city. The sights! The sounds! The smells! We creeped many a person from the vantage point of our bus window, and sometimes they creeped on us in return. 

A bit about Delhi--it's like the eighth largest city in the world with about 20 million people in the region. It's very dusty. It's colorful and dirty. There are people everywhere-sitting on curbs, riding on rickshaws, selling in booths, driving headfirst towards your bus (eep). The poverty was not hidden; we drove past many slums. The city of New Delhi is vaguely including in the area considered Delhi, and it is the capital of India. This area was very nice, containing foreign embassies, parliament, some other stuff, you know. Pretty and full of men with huge rifles. 

Our first emergence was at Purna Qila, a wonderful series of buildings--mosques, temples, that sort of thing. At first I felt self-conscious about looking touristy with the billion pictures I was taking, but then there were more obvious indications that I was foreign, so there was no point trying to hide it. Taking pictures, NO SHAME!

La la la shvwateva

La la la it doesn't matter

Next, we visited Delhi Heart, this pre-structured marketplace that was very organized. While it was pretty and everything, we came to the consensus that it didn't feel authentic; rather, it felt a bit like Epcot.

Disney?

I had my first real bartering experience. The trick to good bartering is to not really want the item so you can walk away at any time. I did not enjoy it. It made me feel unclean, like I was trying to cheat the man with whom I bartered, even armed with the knowledge he was trying to cheat me. I ended up slightly panicking at the end and attempted to walk away, which was mistaken for a shrewd bargaining move. He then lowered the price, but by that time, the deal felt tainted and I wanted no part in it. His parting words were a condescending, "You are confused, madam." Are silver silk balloon harem pants really worth the anxiety? Not today, pal. Not today.

At one point while observing the throngs of people everywhere, Kate started sardonically singing "Elbow Room" from School House Rock with an accompanying dance. "Everybody needs a little elbow room."

Final destination was the Bahá'i Lotus Temple, which looks like the Sydney Opera House taken apart and reassembled.

It seems as though as we have wandered onto some movie set

The Bahá'i Faith is relatively modern, unity is the goal, and all religions are celebrated by contributing to that (note: as one might expect, there were a few notable non-Indian hippies present). The temple is open to meditation and prayer, but to enter, you must remove your shoes, put them in a bag, and trade them for a token. So there we were, walking around in bare feet or socks, and I was just glad my mom was not there because she specifically told me to always wear shoes in India. Sorry, I gots to be me. The weird thing overall about this excursion (and the whole day in general, but particularly at the temple) was all the staring. I had read about it in last blogs from last year, but surriously. It's out of control. While I understand that our skin is entrancingly pale, I don't understand how it can be mesmerizing enough to want pictures with individuals or the group. The polite ones ask; the creepy ones don't. They just snap a photo or film us, all the while never stopping their stare stare starin'. One can only hope that they stare because they care.

Papa, paparazzi

Finally, dinner, my first real Indian food, was very very spicy and though I tried to avoid everything, even the stuff that pretended to be bland still kicked me in the face. My mouth was SCREAMING out the window and waving a handkercheif, but alas, no one had volunteered for the fire department. 

Despite the unusually negative tenor of this post, it was a fun day. I'm just experiencing a little culture shock; India is not a fairy tale the way Spain (and Europe in general really) was. 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fA1gcJ7CVE

Right on! 

Step 1: Getting There

By way of Amsterdam, we flew to Delhi in an overall smooth travel experience. Notable points include:

-Courtney's shocking new hairstyle

-Kate didn't cause any international incidents this time

-No blood clots

-I only got lost once at the airport (a sobering experience which assures I will never let myself be alone again the rest of this trip)

-I wasn't nervous about anything at all when leaving home or being at the airport. Primarily it was the pure notion of being in India of all places for such a long time that was so incredibly absurd that I did not really understand what was happening. All of a sudden on the plane a few hours into the flight, it hit me: I am not coming home for almost FIVE MONTHS. BECAUSE I WILL BE IN INDIA. A flowchart of emotional turbulence:

Denial of situation --> Realization of commitment --> Fear and panic --> A second realization that there's no turning back  --> Acceptance (+ lingering bit of fear in my stomach, or perhaps it was just the airplane food) 

Then I was nervous. But so far, India's been great! After the airport, we trucked through all the smog and pretty stray dogs (yes mom, I refrained from petting them though I so very much desired) to our tour bus. Then, naturally, they adorned us with garlands of marigolds.  We checked in an ultra swanky Hilton hotel... Supes fancy. They had a security scanner walkthrough outside (which was actually pretty lax) but still. This is certainly not representative of how we'll be living normally. Soon we will be venturing out of this westernized bubble... So until then, I don't know any Bengali farewells, but feel free to pretend that I do.