Traveling (and blogging) again

In January of this year, Meg and I decided to travel to India to visit with our friends, Aaron and Kate Katzman. So we booked our tickets, not really knowing what we were getting ourselves into. Now that we are here, I realize that it was a very good thing that we didn't over research our trip prior to buying our tickets because we probably wouldn't have come.

We are traveling here for two weeks and plan on exploring Delhi, Jaipur, Rishikesh, and Varanasi while gorging ourselves on amazing food. This latter bit, is what I'm most excited about.

As i am writing, we have just finished our first day in India. We traveled into Old Delhi to the chandni chowk market, which our friend Aaron says is about as crazy as India gets. It lived up to this description and then some. After many years of hearing dad talk about the chaos of India, I was not surprised by anything, and yet, i was still overwhelmed by the full effect of India (throngs of people, constant car/scooter/rickshaw honking, garbage everywhere, bad smells of mysterious origin, dogs sleeping in gutters, and the occasional cow). It is the most insanely chaotic place imaginable.

To get to the market, we took the metro, which is an elevated train - and a very nice one even by US standards. But in Indian fashion, it was still a crazy experience because we were absolutely packed into the cars like sardines. It was really an uncomfortable and overwhelming experience. Fortunately, I was at least a foot taller than everyone so I could see and breathe freely over the mass of hot sweaty Indian men. (Meg was lucky enough to avoid this and ride in comfort in the women's only car. I could see her in the next car up, riding in comfort, free to move around.) While boarding the train on the way back from the market, I got shoved into the metro car by a huge surge of people trying to all board at once. I reached up with both hands to the handrail in the middle to avoid losing my balance and getting trampled. By the time I got my balance, removed one of my hands from the bar and shoved it back down through the mass of bodies to my pant pocket I found that my wallet had been pinched. Luckily, I didn't have anything in there except about $40 in rupees. All my valuables we either in the safe in the hotel or in my money belt. Good thing leather wallets are pretty cheap here.

We spent the evening going to dinner at a southern indian restaurant with our hosts and their house guests. The food was so delicious. As I am learning, northern Indian food is what we typically can find in America. But south Indian food is harder to find and features many different kinds of flat pancakey types of food, such as Dosa's, that get dipped into various types of dipping sauces. I am sure that I will be craving non-Indian food by the end of the trip, but for now, I'm in heaven. (and no, I did not eat any mangos)

Tomorrow we are taking a train down to Jaipur. Hopefully tomorrow is a little less eventful.