And here I go again....

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So...I am back on the road...after rejuvinating in luxury at the Oberoi with Gail. Delhi was a different experience. We stayed in an incredible hotel...got pampered...saw the Taj Mahal in Agra...and shopped. Now, to be truthful, I am not one for sightseeing. Basically, my best form of traveling (sadly enough) is if I were to have a job that I needed to get done in each place that I visited and I worked to accomplish that job. While to some this makes me a workaholic, to me, this just means that what I really enjoy is the opportunity to get to know a place in a different cultural way. See what it takes to get things done...how to communicate...how to act...when to be patient...and when to get upset.

So, Dehli was an experiment in getting something done...that is shopping. And the name of the game in Dehli is negotiate. Negotiate everything...rickshaw rides...train tickets...pashmina shawls...shirts...shoes...skirts...food...

Now, I am by no means an expert, and truthfully lapsed into acquiesence quite a few times when I was just too tired or hungry to really give a damn about $1-2. But overall, I think we came out ahead...or at least not too far behind.

But Delhi is a different city than I have spent time in before. While the poverty is still apparent, nowehere in India have I seen such a stark contrast between the lower and rising middle class. The palpable sense that India is arriving is written everywhere in Dehli. From the billboards that advertise low rate loans to various forms of education. Businessmen dressed in suits...and women looking professional dot the streets. And in some parts, if the rickshaws did not occasionally cross your path, I'm not sure you would have know you were even in India.

Our day trip to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal was everything it should have been (with a few extra hours thrown in for fun). Majestic in its whiteness, it adorned the sky almost as a white billowy cloud would grace a perfectly blue canvas. Apparently every single thing about the Taj Mahal is in perfect symmetry. The building stands in the center, able to be halved right down the middle with the perfect mirror image on either side. Standing at equadistant sides apart, one side a mosque, and the other a guest house, these two white buildings flank the Taj as if standing guard. Interestingly the only thing not in perfect symetry to this building is that the wife (who the Taj was built for by her husband as a musuleum) is perfectly centered, while the husband has been buried to the wife's left-thus disturbing the perfect symmetry. And it is perhaps this imperfection that makes this structure perfect.

The rest of the day Gail and I spent trolling after our guide...who brought us to the Lost City and a fort...and then headed back to Dehli. Probably the most interesting part of the day after the Taj was the car ride...where we rode through the countryside and outskirts of Agra...passing camels, goats, oxen, mules, chickens, people on bikes, mopeds, etc. The straw huts we passed made me once again marvel at the immense range of living conditions there are in this vast country. It seems that there is very little wasted, and yet everywhere lies waste. In a country with more public service announcements in the form of billboards (in english) about keeping their environment clean, I don't think it would be possible to quantify or qualify the amount of litter in the streets, sidewalks or alleys.

And now I am off again, with this morning's train ride commencing at 6 AM. I have now arrived in Jaipur where I will again tackle the markets in the "Pink City", and tomorrow hurtle myself into another fort (presumably by elephant). I have met my first American backpackers here...and already stood in a formidable line at the train station (the wrong station where I got off), getting a ticket for the night train for tomorrow night to Jaipur. Let's just say this is a whirlwind trip through Rajhastan...and if I make it to the end...it will not be without an extraordinary sense of satisfaction.

Wishing you all a wonderful day...

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Comments

[anonymous]

if you stay more time in jaipur , try the pearl palace hotel for the night or the dinner its extra i arrived this morning in udaipur and just come back to have my first wine drink in front of the lake palace hotel with some portugueses Guillaume