Greetings from India! I am currently in Darjeeling -- tea capital of the world. It's the sixth day of the trip however, so I will start from the beginning and end up in Darjeeling on some other post.
We arrived in Delhi on Monday night, exhausted. Delhi is the definition of chaos. I'm pretty sure one more day there and I would have literally gone into the middle of the street and started screaming "STOP DRIVING LIKE CRAZY PEOPLE!" The concept of lanes does not exist there, despite the white lines painted on the roads. When we were there it was "Driving Safety Week," or something. There were tons of people on the side of the roads w/ signs that said "lane driving is safe driving," or "drive safe, drive again." Unfortunately, their signs weren't very effective.
Despite the chaos the city was relatively interesting. Perhaps the most interesting part was riding on a rickshaw -- which is a cart pulled by a biker. The rickshaw drivers pulled you around the skinny market roads where people sold gorgeous, glittering saaris, bangles, food and every other trinket you can imagine. And everything is super cheap. Even a mini pizza at Pizza Hut is like, $2. Yes they have Pizza Hut in India. It only took us one day to get sick of Indian food, which consists of curry. I know people talk about globalization like it's a bad thing. But personally, I don't really mind it. I mean, I can go anywhere in the world and get a little piece of home, whether that piece be a Pizza Hut or brand name or weird Kenny G Christmas music playing in a restaurant in New Delhi. True, I am an American so I get the ultimate advantage of globalization but still...
The second day of our Delhi experience, our driver took us to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Agra is a four hour drive from Delhi, but that does not mean it's 360 miles. Not, it's like half that, but driving in India is not exactly an American freeway experience, as I mentioned above. The car ride to Agra may have been the worst car ride I've ever experienced. It was four hours of dodging people, dogs, trucks, cows, whatever, and almost running into them multiple times. It was four hours of constant honking --- the horn seems to be an Indian driver's best friend. I personally want to destroy all car horns at the moment, but I'm trying to control myself.
Anyway, the trip to the Taj Mahal was well worth it. The monument was incredible. I was actually surprised at how amazing it was. I am proud to announce that this is the third wonder of the world I have seen...only four more to go!
Seeing the Taj took the whole day. The next day, we hopped on a four-hour plane ride to Bagdogra, India, from which we took a three hour car ride up the mountains to Darjeeling. That car ride will be the subject of a following blog. Let me just say it included fear, animals and weird covers of "Billie Jean" and "Ghostbusters." It was great. To be continued...
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