Delhi Weekend

This weekend was such a whirlwind, I am so behind on my blogging. But I found a few extra minutes so here's just part of all that's gone on in the past week.

At 2:30 am Friday morning we all woke up, drove 2 hours to the airport, flew 3 hours to New Delhi, and the first thing we did was take a bicycle rickshaw ride around Old Delhi. It was a BLAST!!

The city is really old and insane....of course it is, or it wouldn't be India. The streets were incredibly narrow and the amount of people they could fit on a street block was mind blowing. I'm pretty sure we almost got hit like 20 times, but once again...that's India. We stopped at the spice market, and drove past a huge Muslim mosque. They even had their little prayer come across the loud speaker! I was entertained.There's a bigger muslim influence up in northern India compared to southern India where we spent most of our time. Most of the people in the south are Hindu. I also think the people are better looking up north, have more money, and the food is 100X better. It's more of the classic chicken korma, chicken tikka masala, naan kind of food. AMAZING. We ate at a really good (but really dirty..of course, it's still India) restaurant in the middle of one of the busy streets in Old Delhi. I peed in the nastiest bathroom there. It takes the cake for nasty bathrooms...Anyways, we also had the best butter chicken and roti bread...oh my gosh..I'm dying just thinking about it. I also had a diet coke so that sealed the deal for me.

The spice market was pretty interesting..and yes mom, I bought some. Curry anyone?

 

Our next stop after Delhi was the Lotus Temple. It's this huge building in the shape of a Lotus flower built by the Bahai faith but it's open to the public. We went because a girl in our group is Bahai...it was kinda boring for the rest of us but cool to see regardless.

The funniest part about our trip was all the looks we got. Whenever we would take a picture, there would be an Indian crowd taking pictures of us too. And then they would stop us and ask for pictures...or just jump in our pictures all together like this lady up there did. It was HILARIOUS! We felt like celebrities with the paparazzi following us around. At one point 2 blonde girls in our group had been standing in one place for 20 minutes taking pictures with the Indians and there was a LINE of Indian people wanting to get in on that action...too funny.

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After all of that, we drove 7 hours to Agra and crashed in our hotel rooms around midnight. Then at 4:30 am the next morning we woke up to hit the Taj Mahal before it got to be 115 degrees (which it did later on).

The Taj was awesome! The symmetry was what amazed me the most. And I loved that it was built out of love for his wife (don't ask me to name names...Indian names confuse the heck out of me). But whoever he was, he was romantic.

 

After 2 nights in a row of virtually no sleep, we couldn't help but catch a few zzz's on the Taj's ground....can you blame us?

Later that day we went to the Agra Fort which is a military base now, but it was used to protect a palace back in the day. It was pretty and it was really cool to be around something so ancient.

More pictures of this whole weekend are on my flickr!

 

The hotel we were staying at was pretty posh...this little Arabian prince came to greet us each time we came and went. Loved him. I felt a lot more of a persian/middle eastern feel up in the north compared to the south--kind of what you always picture India to be. It was fun to experience it. Saturday night my friend Kim and I got massages! We started off in the sauna, then the steam room, then back in the sauna, then a 60 minute head to toe massage, then back in the steam room, and then a jacuzzi bath all for $65 bucks! It was 2 1/2 hours of bliss. Funny fact: we asked for separate rooms, but because of the language barrier (it's getting annoying) we were put in a couple's massage. Let's just say, Kim and I are a lot closer now....

This is what we rode around in the whole weekend.....could it be any more obvious?

On the way back to Delhi from Agra, we stopped on the side of the road because we saw an elephant and wanted to ride it. Turns out they had monkeys and camels too!

It was fun to ride an elephant...but secretly I felt bad. That poor elephant's eyes broke my heart. He looked soo sad! And the monkey in the costume was cute, but...but..but...it was sad. I just wanted to let them free! But since I couldn't, I got good pictures...haha, is that bad?

Anyways, it was an EXHAUSTING weekend. We got home around midnight Sunday night and then my group had to wake up around 5:30 the next morning to go on an overnight trip to a leprosy colony, so needless to say I am still recovering...hence the lack of blogging.

Another post, another day! But on a happy note-Home tomorrow!

I have loved being in India but I'm so stoked to come home....for a few reasons....

bow chicka ow wow!!!!