india part 1

we're in india! (this is yona writing). we've been here a few days. table of contents for this post: flight, delhi, india in general, jaipur. so today is sunday. we left the u.s. on tuesday and got to mumbai on wednesday night.

a very generous and kind wedding gift to us, from patti and wayne thank you so much, was our plane ticket to india. and if that wasn't nice enough, it was first class! it is SO la di da. (in this case, la di da is an adjective). the seats massaged and could be adjusted in a zillion ways. the airline attendants kept saying "thank you" to US, we were offered so much food and snacks and drinks, tons of legroom, a nice pillow, a nice blanket, nice headphones... for meals they set out a cloth table cloth and gave us cloth napkins. there were little salt and pepper shakers. they asked if we'd like to be woken up for breakfast. THAT is the way to travel. oh and then in atlanta and amsterdam, where we stopped briefly, we could go to the lounges which are so nice.

well. so mumbai is a crazy big city that has crazy chaotic driving and it's like an extreme sport to just sit in the back of the car. not exactly lanes, and i only saw a few traffic lights. tons of swerving and honking constantly and people on motorcycles and bicycles mixed up with the crazy chaos. we stayed the night and then went to delhi which also has crazy driving... it's totally overwhelming. we went to namhita and vishal's house, who live there and generously welcomed us. they are the aunt and uncle of one of my former students, saachi. we stayed there a few nights and saw some good stuff in delhi. they were very helpful and kind, and it was really nice to spend time with them. in delhi we saw qutub minar and the red fort, which i liked a lot. we also saw a play and did a food meditation. we did/saw other stuff too, but that was the best and i just felt so overwhelmed and exhausted by being surrounded by so many people and so much noise and traffic. i am NOT a city person.

next we went to jaipur. we arrived last night. we're staying in a really nice haveli, which is like an old mansion with a courtyard. the woman who owns/runs it was talking to us this morning about how the house has been in her family for 5 generations. jaipur is so much nicer size-wise and just feels so much more comfortable to me. there's still a ton to look at all around us, constantly, and it still feels like a city, but it's not chaotic-feeling.

this morning we walked from the haveli to the old jaipur area and went to jantar mantar, an astrological observatory. that place was really interesting and we'll post pictures next time we blog. it was interesting how astronomy and astrology are so tied together, and there are these amazing 300+ year old stone instruments that calculate the exact time, the exactly angle of the sun at different times of each day, around the calendar, and all this stuff, that had the end-goal of being able to predict people's signs, horoscopes, and futures in general. we also walked past and then got invited into a temple. it was a hare krishna temple, and we were asked to wash our hands and take off our shoes before going in. lots and lots of singing was happening, and the men and women were separated. there were huge burlap bags in the entrance filled with corn. we don't know for sure, but there were a few places today where there were a bunch of pigeons and people feeding them corn. we thought maybe there's a devotional/respectful/hindu thing where you feed pigeons. there were swarms of pigeons. we've also seen cows in the streets, and at one point there were some very large, probably wild, pigs on the side of the road.

next time i'll write about to-let, middle bellies, and we'll put up some pictures. generally speaking, mom and dad, we're feeling healthy and eating well and only drinking bottled water and wearing seatbelts when they exist. i mean, er, drinking lots of bottled water.