Old Delhi India

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Old Delhi .............Monkeys up in the air running along cables and jumping from balcony to balcony, huge bulls with giant horns just walking and grazing on the side of the road, cows standing on the center devide minding their own business, but did turn to actually look at me when I took a photo which made me laugh. Goats up on the sidewalks. Happy dogs running around everywhere with no apparent owners, a ton of chip monks scampering up to you to see if you have anything for them and if not scamper away just as fast. Beautiful red ring parrots sitting cuttled on the top of ruins. Wild parakeets everywhere. The animals are respected and given as much right of away as any human. All the animals are relaxed and not bothered in the slightest by all the people rushing by and the constant honking of horns that are meant to just let you know that a Cycle Rickshaw or the little green and yellow 3 wheel motorized Rickshaw is behind you and not meant to be agressive, of course so does any other morotized vehicle. The roads are shared equally with all pedestrians, animals, rickshaws autos and anything else that happens to be traveling in that direction. No one is bothered by the extremely crowded conditions and constant bumping into each other. I felt hot breath on my hand today and jumped 3 feet when I turned and saw a bull standing next to me in the road, he just kept walking.......yikes! I wondered where on earth do these stray animals get their food? But there are several dump sites where both poor homeless people and animals dig for food. We saw, people, dogs and cows and bulls digging in the same dump for food.

We walked down the popular street, Chandni Chowk where the sidewalks if there are any either pavement or dirt seem reserved for merchants selling their wares which is anything you can imagine, beautiful bright colorful fabrics for the saris, colorful fragerent spices, nuts and dried fruits, clothing, food being cooked right there on the street, yum! We searched out a place to eat called Karims near Jama Masjid the largest Mosque in India the last building built by Shaw Jahad who built the Taj Mahal. Now Karims was noted in the Lonely Planet guide book as a great place to eat and it was somewhere just off that busy road near the mosque. We were very lucky and found it right away down a narrow walk way the only problem was there were at least 5 little places right there with the exact same name!! So of course we had to laugh? It turns out that they all share the same kitchen! We did notice on our way out that there were several people in different areas cooking different things and they were basically all cooking in the walkways. Then noticed all the waiters running around from the center out to the different little restaurants.

Oh get this! There is a McDonalds that has little red scooters that say "McDelivery"!! Ha!

I've been saying "we", I met a friend, Pat, retired Forest Ranger, here at the YWCA who is also traveling alone, she just happens to be approximately my age and from Northern California if you can believe it. She and I are both leaving at the end of the week continuing our travels in India in different directions, but it's been so great to pal around with someone. We do stand out so are stared at by just about everyone. But most children and younger people are very friendly and do seem to take the opportunity to practice their english and then seem to feel quite pleased with themselves and then giggle which makes us laugh also of course. I think we are also not bothered as much when we say no to the constant offers for rides on one of the rickshaws for so many rupees, which is highly negotiable. The drivers never have change until you tell them you can not tip them because you need change, then of course it magically appears. We also get followed at every ruin or mosque by people offering to be our guide for a few rupees or children shoving post cards in your face. There are 40 rupees to 1 dollar.

Took a great photo of an Indian Guard with a beautiful deep blue turban, he had a big curly mustash and was so great about the photo, he said he had a dancing mustash then he did whatever he did to make it look like it was jumping around then we all laughed. It's a great photo.

So many beautiful buildings with beautiful art work. We went to a place called Lodi Gardens, there was a photo in one of my books from there I wanted to take. As we were walking through the park a man approached me with a very thick accent saying Mam....welcome mam......then the typical questions, what is your name? Where are you from?....etc, etc.
then he insisted on pinning some kind of little pin on my shirt continuing to walk beside me pestering me for a donation of some type, when I refused he got mad and yanked the pin back!!! My friend thought that was very funny.

Air quality seems better yesterday and today I actually saw some blue sky to my delight. OK, I'm tired and hungry, going to get some more wonderfuly spicy Indian food.

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