Day Six

I am writing on the sixth day of our trip in India. If you were to tell me that I would know this much after six days I might say that I am afraid to see what I know after six months. Things move very fast here and I must say that I had the stereo type that only in America did things move so fast. One day in a car on a New Delhi street changed that perception.

I have to come to figure out that there are layers of culture shock. I think this will be an on going process of thinking I know something about this place and then realizing that I have no clue.

Steve and I have decided to offer many different ways of posting on this blog. As of now it has been difficult to get good Internet connection at Hargobind’s house... this is probably the only difficult thing that we have experienced here... I feel as though we have been wrapped up in the love and welcome of this family. It has been great.
Here is a little overview of the monuments we have seen, and mentionable activities:

8/18 Day One- New Delhi adventuring- Red Fort and Baha’i House of Worship
8/19 Day Two- Beginning “The Golden Triangle” tour- Driving to Jaipur-
Amber Fort......... “Water Palace” ...

8/20 Day Three-Animal watching- Keoladeo Ghana National Park- We had a blast here!


The bikes were, let's say, less than smooth
Watch out serious nature photographers coming through! Soooo Cool!
and the Grand Fatehpur Sikri Mosque


8/21 Day Four- Seeing the indescribable Taj Mahal driving back to New Delhi


Security doing their job The detail is unbelievable A buzzard chillin'
We can't take her anywhere!

8/22 Day Five- Train to Amritsar and Hargobind’s Family

Morning tea from the tea man... is lovely



8/23 Day Six- Golden Temple, being special guests at a friend of the families

I was encouraging him to smile with his teeth... apparently he didn't like the way they looked :) prassad is a sweet blessing
8/24 Day Seven- Going for an early walk in the park, suit shopping and seeing Sunder Kaur’s wedding ring being finished by the jeweler
8/25-29th
hanging at the Punjab Academy and principal Harman house
Party at the "club" A beautifully done play Ah aren't they cute! Stephen watching OBAMA Jasleen publizing her new must read: "Vegetable, Animal, Miracle" By Barbra Kingsolver People enjoying us taking pictures of them
"Guru" Jasleen Teaching Paramjit Yoga excercices for his hurting back
If you would like to see more pictures from Amritsar click on the flickr pictures to the right of this blog.

This is the view from our hotel the morning after we arrived. It seemed safest to check it out from afar!


Guess what?

We're alive and in Delhi. They told us that wireless Internet was not
working in the hotel, so Jasleen is writing from their decrepit
computers. I just plugged mine in and it worked perfectly. Evan, the
drawing looks great, and I'll give you all more photos and stuff in a
bit. We went to the Red Fort and the Ba'hai Temple today and they
were very cool, though the people around us are still the most
exciting (and at times frightening) part of the journey. There is
certainly a lot of poverty here, but it isn't as oppressive as most
people implied... so far. However, the volume of people as well as
how different almost everybody looks from what we're used to is
amazing. Life is definitely a drastic change from what it was 2 days
ago. And, by the way driving here is hilarious! You basically lay on
the horn while bicycles and auto-rickshaws fly towards you while
simultaneously laying on their horns.

So the plan is, we're headed to Jaipur, then Agra from here through
some deal set up through our hotel. It's a little more pricey than
necessary I think, but sometimes haggling here is more a test of
patience than ability. i.e. How many times do I want this lady to
hang up and call back with prices before she finally comes down to the
price that is more fair, but also a relatively insignificant
difference? Or, how much do I want to argue with the cabbie that
there is not actually a "required shopping stop" after we see a
temple? (By the way, this shop had pretty damned amazing things, we
looked at hand stitched pashmina bed sets that were outrageously cool
with elaborate trees and peacocks hand sewn in with beautifully dyed
silk thread. They would cost easily $500 in the states) But the trip
should be fun, we're seeing the required Taj Mahal and various other
forts and fancy looking things and after our two city tour we will go
strait to the train up to Amritsar where we'll meet up with our
friends Sunder Kaur and Hargobind Singh at Hargobind's parent's house.
I think our trip will really pick up after Amritsar when we're out of
the massive cities and also off the beaten track a bit. I don't
particularly like be funneled through Delhi's intricate tourist
network like a cow headed for the slaughter(though obviously not to
the slaughter here, where they hang in the middle of the road), but at
the moment we are just what we look like, rich American tourists who
don't have a damn clue.

So those are my initial impressions I suppose. Delhi really is a lot
of madness mixed in with little pockets of beauty, but I'm not sure
those pockets are worth all of the madness. Ok, Namaste y'all. We'll
update the blog and load pictures from Amritsar and I'll write a more
together picture of how things are going. Love you Mom and Dad and
Evan. If you haven't gotten you're head around the conversion yet,
you guys are 11:30 behind us, so it's 10:45pm here.

we are alive...

Hello dearest family,

We have arrived. We had are first official day in Inida today. Things are going well. We are both getting more and more comfortable with each moment that goes by. We have a two day trip to the Taj Mahal and to Jipur then we head to Amritsar to stay with a friend of mine from Boulder, her husband and his family who lives in Amritsar. We are excited to see familiar faces and to be in a home environtment.

The plane was very long but without checking our bags we breezed through to our driver and then to the hotel. I am not really getting use to the attention I am getting for being a women and white...definitely one of those things that I didn't expect to have to deal with until I was experiencing it. As a wise man once said "You won't be aware of your expectations until they are not met... or something like that. Today we saw the redfort and the HUGE Bahai Lotus temple...this was made out of concrete and marble tile in the shape of a lotus...amazing! This was very cool...cool enough to say that we want to come back to it if we are back in Delhi. It turns out that no one stays in Delhi for too long...even the locals say this.

I could go on more but I will save my typing for when I am not in a very hot non-ventilated room...

So happy to be here safe and sound...and feeling safer as we get more comfortable...

Ta ta for now!

•Jasleen•
Tara•Joy