Yesterday, when I started writing, I wanted to write a little about the Indians that we’ve both met and not met, but have seen, have related to at some level or another, even if it’s just walking through a market and taking their photos or calling room service. It’s always dangerous an mostly wrong to generalize about people in a country of 1 billion so what’ I’m going to say refers I guess to an insignificant sample size. But blab on I will. These are the friendliest people we’ve ever run into. Everywhere we go, everywhere in the crush of people that is the norm, anytime we smiled at someone they smiled back. Genuine smiles. Ask to take their photo, no problem. Ask them to step to the left for a better photo, happy to do ... read more

While we are sitting, waiting for the election results, I thought I'd tell you about an experience that Dan Lewis and Ashley Hartman thought was one of the most amazing. It was a traffic jam in Jodhpur. Big deal? Remember I wrote about the narrow streets and the traffic that was so intense that I had trouble describing it? Well, try to picture this; a 10 foot wide road with vendor stalls on both sides jutting into the street. Bicycles, motorcycles, three-wheeled taxis (there's a picture of one in last night's blog) and pedestrians going both ways in a crush like nobody's ever seen. There is no sidewalk or curb, just storefronts and parking and vehicles and pedestrians all hurrying every which way. Now imagine a cross steet of the same size, with the same volume ... read more

The trip over was perfect, uneventful, but it's a long flight. You can smell Delhi before you even see it. It's not what you might think; the smell is pungent, not very nice, but also, not resembling anything else you might be used to. Our first impression was denseness. There are people all over at a density we've never experienced. Everyone looks poor, many, maybe half, destitute. Half of a huge number of people having nothing yet going about their daily business, whatever that may be. The hotel with 4-stars is as you would expect; not bad, but not so great not either. It's 10 1/2 hours later here than on the east coast. Even with a sleeping pill a piece, we were weirded out. And we woke up at 2 AM and basically have been ... read more