What Day Is It and Where am I?

This isn't too far off the mark. To say this is a 'whirlwind' tour of India is an understatement. And our local guide is doing his best to make sure we see and experience EVERYTHING - which is great, but exhausting.

Yesterday morning waking up in Delhi (was that just yesterday?) the guide let us know he was changing the itinerary a bit and that we would be spending the day touring in Old & New Delhi, then late in the afternoon drive to Agra (in other words, pushing our visit to the Taj Mahal to day 2).

We were all over the city and saw all the main sites - the Red Fort, India Gate, the Gandhi Memorial and India's largest mosque, the Jama Masjid. All were impressive but the most fascinating part of the day was when the driver took us into Old Delhi, stopped the bus and we all got out and walked through the tiny alley-way streets for awhile.

I've been to places - a lot of places - but right now words escape me to try and describe what I saw or how it effected me. In the coming days I will post photos and try and speak more about it once I've had some time to process it all.

Those who know my eating habits should be proud - I ate nothing but Indian food today! We went to a great restaurant called Gulati in New Delhi and I had Murgh Tikka (chicken marinated in ginger and garlic, roasted in a tandoor), Jeera Aloo (potatoes with cumin) and awesome garlic Naan bread.

Late in the afternoon we headed off for Agra which we thought was a 3 hour bus ride but our guide informed us was a 5 hour ride. In the end, it took us nearly 7 hours due to traffic (and cows!) in the road. The car and truck horns are incessant and absolutely insane. It is common practice to honk every time you pass someone and there is LOTS of passing. So it was literally 7 hours of non-stop horn honking. Plus, to make it interesting, many of the trucks have specialty horns that play little songs... I think I actually heard the sound of the honking in my sleep last night! By the time we got to the hotel in Agra, got to our room and had a quick bite to eat (Samosas) it was nearly midnight and we had a 5:45am call time today for the Taj Mahal - hope this helps explain why I didn't post last night!