“all” the trains from jaipur to delhi were “booked” – hard to believe considering i inquired two days in advance and there’s a train leaving for delhi every ten minutes, but whatever. so i took the bus. call me shallow, but my first day in delhi i was magnetically drawn to a shopping mall. i just felt this need to get away from the heat, incessant touts, beggars, bicycles trying to hit me, etc. and to eat something other than veg thali, masala dosas, and puri, as tasty as those foods are. “the great india place” is apparently the best mall in india. it was really nice – for india. don’t let the hype and the gdp growth figures fool you though – india is very much “developing,” and will be for a long, long time. a month ago i would have imagined the nicest mall in india to be a lot more amazing than it was.
after saying that, delhi has an amazing new metro system, being built in preparation for the commonwealth games that are going to be here this fall. the best thing is that you don’t have to barter for how much the trip is going to cost. although that sort of takes the fun out of it i guess. anyways, after taking it to the mall in the suburb of noida, i took it to the largest hindu temple in the world. today, i went to the international church here (after searching for quite some time to find it. rickshaw drivers sometimes say they know where something is and it turns out they have no idea). it was so nice. my first real church service in maybe over four months – it was absolutely refreshing. i love a good church. had a sit down chat with the pastor after the service, at his request. he was the man. there aren’t many churches here, to say the least.
i also went to a museum devoted to mahatma gandhi on the site where he was shot, then humayun’s tomb, perhaps india’s most impressive piece of mughal architecture. apparently there was a serious delhi-specific terrorist alert issued this weekend. so the military is absolutely everywhere right now, doing pat downs and waving their ak-47s around. they even had a little bunker set up in a shiny new metro station – completely surrounded by sandbags. i’m not going to say its overkill or they might arrest me – after all i had to give up my passport and every piece of personal data imaginable just to use this computer. personal liberties………… i digress.
tonight i head down to indira gandhi international airport to embrace my good friend devin from home, whom i will be joining as wingman on his indian adventures. he was supposed to get here last night but the toilet on the plane broke or something, so its 3:15 am tonight. yay! it will be really nice to have someone sleeping next to me every night.
