sorry, i've gotten a little behind on the blogging, let me try to catch up a little! went to the airport and met my friend devin. he finally came out a little over 2 hours after his flight landed.... indian immigration. we hung out in delhi for 2 days - one day in old delhi which is a walled maze of little chaotic shopping streets. went to a very golden sikh temple where they give out free food and sing beautiful sounding sikh songs. also more hindu temples and a jain temple that had a bird "hospital" - more like a couple thousand birds being held in a cage. tried to get into the jama masjid - the largest mosque in india - but even though it was supposed to be free they wouldn't let us in unless we payed a lot of rupees. may have almost lost my temper. but i'll stop writing about it now because its a bit of a sore spot. the second day we walked around new delhi - refused about a million determined salesmen beneath the shadow of the india arch, decided not to go into the indian national museum because of the exorbinant admission fee, and saw the president's house. a punjabi chap named mr. singh gave us a ride in his rickshaw. that's also the prime minister's name - what a coincidence. the smog in delhi is so bad that the sun never directly shines - i can't imagine hot it would be if it did. then we hung out around connought place, the main shopping circle in delhi, before catching an evening train to agra.
agra is the home of the taj mahal. it truly is beautiful. there were thousands of indian tourists there. rather unexpectedly, almost every single one of them wanted to get their pictures taken with us. so all morning we posed in pictures. definitely the most popular i have or ever will be in my life. some don't even ask - they just put their arm around you while their friend takes the photo. and oddly its not cool for an indian to smile in a picture. it was outrageous and, needless to say, got a little old after a while. so we sat on a spatially isolated ledge under one of the minarets for a good while where only one indian tourist could gain access to talk to us at a time. later devin got violently ill, which was rather unfortunate. we then took the night/most of the next day too train to varanasi. we met a girl named lauren from new york where we were staying in agra, with whom we've been hanging out with ever since. varanasi is a remarkable place, but i think that will have to wait for the next post because i'm getting tired and we have to get up realllllly early tomorrow.....
agra is the home of the taj mahal. it truly is beautiful. there were thousands of indian tourists there. rather unexpectedly, almost every single one of them wanted to get their pictures taken with us. so all morning we posed in pictures. definitely the most popular i have or ever will be in my life. some don't even ask - they just put their arm around you while their friend takes the photo. and oddly its not cool for an indian to smile in a picture. it was outrageous and, needless to say, got a little old after a while. so we sat on a spatially isolated ledge under one of the minarets for a good while where only one indian tourist could gain access to talk to us at a time. later devin got violently ill, which was rather unfortunate. we then took the night/most of the next day too train to varanasi. we met a girl named lauren from new york where we were staying in agra, with whom we've been hanging out with ever since. varanasi is a remarkable place, but i think that will have to wait for the next post because i'm getting tired and we have to get up realllllly early tomorrow.....
