That One Time In India

So around 11:00 am I landed back in Kathmandu, Nepal. The flight from Delhi was really short, I fell asleep nearly before we were off the ground and woke up to read my book. It was a quick and bumpy landing then a cheap (ish) taxi ride back home, not much has changed, except for the one business in my neighborhood has come quite a long way on reconstructing the wall in the front that holds the gate, not that any of you care about that. I walked in and about a half hour later I was eating dhal bhat again... It wasn't the dhal bhat alone that made me wish so desperately to be back in Delhi...

The weekend went like this...

I arrived in Delhi around 9:00 pm, just a little later than expected due to the monsoon that was occurring. I exchanged some money so I could have Indian Rupees and headed out the doors. There she was in a glistening see of Indians: Amanda. She even made me a sign that she held over her head that said "Brianna Griesinger," and for those of you wondering it didn't have a smiley face on it.

Due to the monsoon, there were no taxis available so Amanda and I struggled our way around until finally we got one. After Amanda gave all of the instructions necessary to the yah know local cab driver, we arrived at her guest house. Her room was wonderful, equipped with bright lights, an air conditioner, and a TV that had English channels. She also prepared for my visit with a few snacks in the room for that night. We went to bed pretty late because we both had so much to say, and well let's face it, I was mesmerized by the TV.

We slept in, since we'd been up so late, and Amanda had the day off from work. We woke up, got ready, and the guest house made us egg sandwiches (I'm currently obsessed with egg, so I was quite pleased). We headed out and Amanda bought me a metro card and we went on our way. First we went to this super old little village type place of ruins right off of a lake. It was raining so we sat and talked all about the last seven weeks. From there we went to a market that in ways reminded me of Oaxaca and in others reminded me of Kathmandu. We bought some salwar tops and a few gifts for a few of our favorite people ;) . Next we headed to get South Indian food and it was just as good as I hoped. We headed home to rest, because even with the rain in the morning, Delhi is hot. We hung out in the room until, ya know, well, our stomachs settled down a bit... and then we headed out to the mall to buy pants to go with my salwars. We also stopped and got ice cream cones (from McDonalds, nice and safe) and then headed home.

We woke up around 5:00 am on Saturday got dressed, and woke up our taxi driver off the couch to remind him he'd agreed to drive us to the train station. (While that last sentence was a loose translation, lacking the details, everything I just stated was oh so very true). We made it to the train station in time and found our platform. If anything has ever smelled awful in my entire life its the Delhi train station we were at. Poverty and dirt at its finest. Mothers stand facing the tracks on the platforms and their children squat without pants on and hold their mothers ankles mean while crapping, if you can even call it that, more like diarrhea-ing neon yellow, into the train tracks. Sorry for that, but hey you're the one that kept reading past "crapping, if you can even call it that, more like" which really is probably where you should've stopped, I however had to say it, for I feel it important for you to know the state of this train station.

Then we went to the Taj Mahal.

No really that's about how it happened, after some haggling and ya know paying way more than we should have... we got in an auto rickshaw, and then walked through a "neighborhood," down some dark stairs, through a few more streets with curves and twists and asking a few locals... we reached the Taj Mahal. The security is actually pretty decently intense considering it's India, unfortunately we lost some valuable items in the process. But just past security, there it was, in all its glory, the freaking Taj Mahal (as Amanda and I kept calling it). It wasn't one of those places you hear about where like you see it and your like oh it's tiny and dumb... it was magestical, as I like to call things, it was big, really big, and white, really, really white. We walked all around and saw it from all sorts of angles and views, we took photos and we strapped on our little booties and we went inside the freaking Taj Mahal. It was bizarre to actually be there. Amanda and I kept just looking at each other and laughing, in disbelief.

After we went to the Red Fort I believe it was called which was beautiful and had super cool views of the Taj Mahal. The problem was it was hot. Very hot.

We did other stupid pointless things and then, literally ran to catch the train back to Delhi.

Sunday we slept in and took the metro into Old Delhi, it was a bit more like Kathmandu there. Tons of people out and about, people screaming and running at us simply for being white, markets and religion and monkeys and mosques and it was just really wonderful. On top of everything else our bike rickshaw driver had a good soul, but really I loved him dearly, he was amazing at his job.

I also have to admit, we went to McDonalds (there are none in Nepal, and a zillion in Delhi alone), and I tried a McVeggie Burger, because when in India, and at McDonalds with a McVeggie Burger on the menu, as a vegetarian I HAD to. It was utterly delicious.

We went back and rested in the room and went traipsing out for a good quality dinner before I returned back to the land of dhal bhat.

And well here I am, sitting in Lovely Home writing a blog post, missing Amanda dearly, counting down the hours until I reach Detroit, and desperately desperately trying to re-inspire myself as a photojournalist for these last three weeks.