From the 5th floor of a rickety New Delhi hostel

Hi Hi all, I'm in Delhi.

These rows of computers in this hostel (The Smyle Inn) are new enough to put up some pictures. We arrived in Agra two days ago at about 3am after about 30 hours on a train and took a nap on the marble floors of a holding room at the station waiting for dawn to come. On the train we had interesting and passionate discussions with a Hindu Social Activist and a doctor, mostly about differences between the U.S. and India, Obama, and Indian politics...also about religion and the Spirit and the indivisibility of existence (that's absolutely true, haha). Both very interested in us and very sweet and helpful. When we got in however, neither of us could sleep, either because of the screeching train whistles every 15 minutes, the stern lady announcing the train's arrival or departure both in Hindi and English repeating the same message 5 times in a row (not an exaggeration, I counted), or the large Sikh seated next to Josh snoring and hacking. Rough morning.

We took a cold rickshaw to the Taj Mahal (I'll admit, mostly out of obligation- neither of us had a burning desire to see the Taj, but felt we had to since we were in India! haha). It was about 15$ for foreigners to gain entrance and a donation based charge to store our backpacks in some side alley with no sign, in the care of an old bearded man who drew numbers on our packs in chalk and handed us a golden token. At any rate, we made it into the Taj Mahal complex at about 7am (when it opens) and stepped in, cold, tired, all giggles, and feeling rather unimpressed. Why? We couldn't see 10 yards in front of us because of a very thick fog. So we got the gist of the structure, and saw the marble, and got the tour etc. But the farthest we could view it from was about 30 feet. As I recall it now, it was a ridiculous morning. Multiplied by our frequent revelations and re-revelations that we were actually in the middle of India on a Sunday at the break of dawn...still so weird.

We took a bus up to Delhi that same day and had a hell of a time finding our hostel, because it's located in and between various alleyways and hidden tunnels and spaces in a mess of buildings, wires, signs, and stairs. We're in an area called the Main Bazar, around a main and torn up/muddy street where all...ALL types of shops exist. Along with the usual cows, rickshaws, beggars, peddlers, flowers, spices, toys, shoes, carts, fruit, and on and on.

Today we visited the Gandhi Memorial and large garden and the Lodhi Gardens (old garden/park surrounding a 500+ year old mosque. Tomorrow we will visit the Gandhi Museum, the oldest Jain temple in Delhi, and some Indira Gandhi/Nerhu museums and the garden where Gandhi was assassinated.

That's a brief sum-up, and I'll post some pertinent pictures from the trip up until now, you can click on them to make them bigger:
Top is Josh and Mayukh standing at the balcony of the room Josh and I stayed in at Vijay and Shim's apartment. Bottom is their living room-- notice the lack of television and general simplicity :)


This is "Papa VJ" buying tomatoes from farmers in the countryside outside Hyderabad















Then a family picnic on the lawns of a Hindu Temple


















Here we see a white tiger at the Nehru Zoo in Hyderabad



















Top is Mayukh being a superhero, middle is Vijay, Apparajita (head of that JK Center, the very radiant and magnetic woman who offered Josh and I a stay at the center), and Shim, Bottom is the main meditatio hall at the center (Vijay sitting in front of a TV and a man on the right, who worked at the center, bringing us a video to watch of Krishnamurti)




There are six bunks in each little section, with another 3 on the side (it's difficult to describe), with about 15 little sections in each car, and they fold up and down for sitting or sleeping. The toilet in the middle is a traditional squat toilet that drains into a hole in the bottom of the train unloading onto the tracks below. There was one western toilet per car. 30 hours on one of these. There were various people who would stream up and down the walk way yelling out what they were selling in these weird high pitched robot voices, "ChaiiiCoffeee, ChaiiiCoffeee..." or "BhiriyaniBhiriyaniBhiriyani..." over and over and over, endlessly, at all hours.


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What remains to be seen are pictures from Auroville, the Taj Mahal, and the beginnings of our Delhi tour. The internet started to go screwy when I tried to put more up, so I'll call this good for now. More in the next couple days!