Out on the town

Well Saturday was incredible. I had a lot of fun with Sachin and company. Although I got very little sleep the night before. My day started at 7:15 am. I packed and check out of my room around 8:45am to meet the driver for the day.

During the day we visited:

• The Museum of Modern Art (no pictures)
• The Parliament building (makes ours look small.)
• India Gate (just wow)
• CP (center of Delhi and a ton of markets.
• Bercos (Chinese food)
• Tombs (can't remember the names of the people...hehe)
• Lucents Temple (didn't get up close....to many people)
• Delhi Hut (another market)

The city is huge and very different from a lot of US cities. At the center of Dehli every single corner was coated in poo. There were people everywhere and although I could have bought things I was too overwhelmed. Street merchants weren't constantly trying to get you to buy and refused to listen to no. Shops were small enclosed spaces with plenty of gift items from India and textiles. (Again I didn't buy anything.) Sachin did purchase two purses for Kirsten. Originally the merchant wanted 450 rubies per bag. (Sachin was after 3 in total.) He managed to work her down to 600 rubies for all three. This took around 20 minutes though. I was till amazed. The longer we stood there though the more street merchants began to cluster and take the opportunity to try and sell us the little things in their hands. In normal stores prices are comparable to the US. On those streets though you could have gotten some good deals.

The architecture here is amazing. I have a lot of pictures i can show on that. Although I don't like taking pictures of people without there knowledge I did get some of the shops and such. The other places we visited were huge and incredible. The steps at the tombs were almost too big for me to make though. If they would have been 4 or 5 iches higher I would have had a hard time just getting my legs up high enough and they were steep.

The entire day was excellent though. We ended at Delhi Hut which is a little higher priced but merchants are showing their wares more freely and no street merchants were hounding you. I was extremely tired at the end of the day but I had a great time.

Oh one thing I did want to mention is at India Gate a crazy person had a cobra which he had drained the posion out of in a basket and was encouraging it to strike him. I took a few photos from a ways off. I had no desire to go near. He also chased us down for money later cause we took his picture. Sigh. I saw a lot though. I wish I could have overcome my fear to buy items but it was still a great experience.

David