India - Jim Nov 30th

We arrived in India on Friday afternoon, still on antibiotics for the Typhoid but feeling well, and ready to explore a new country. After navigating the chaos at the airport we found ourselves in an ancient taxi winding our way from the SW corner of Delhi to the NW corner where we had a hotel reservation in a Tibetan refugee part of the city. Both we and the cab made it and within a few minutes we were in our pretty plush room, plush by my travel standards, it has an in room bathroom. We parked our stuff and went out for a walk to check out the immediate neighborhood, tiny lanes with stalls on one side and shops on the other full of people, shopping, strolling or just hanging out along the way enjoying a cup of tea with friends. When we got back to the hotel we decided to take a bit of a nap before dinner, the first thing either of us knew it was 10PM and we just wanted to sleep a bit more. The next morning we were up pretty early, had a great breakfast at the hotel, banana pancakes for Adam, toast and eggs for me, and headed off to spend the day, Saturday, in Delhi seeing the sights and museums, turns out it was local election day in Delhi and almost everything was closed for the day esp anything to do with the government so we walked a lot and saw the Indian version of the national mall, the Arch of India, kind of an Indian Arch de Triumph, at one end and the enormous Presidential Palace at the other end. Later we found a beautiful park that housed the tombs of some of the Mogul Emperors, think Taj Mahal on a slightly smaller scale. It was a great way to spend the afternoon especially the grounds which were beautifully landscaped and just a great place to hang out. Later, we walked across a few streets and into a local bazaar where we found a Kashmiri restaurant, the food was great but we really dont have much of an idea of what we ordered. From there it was back across Delhi by auto rickshaw, metro and petal rickshaw to our hotel and a fairly early night. Today, being Sunday and not election day the National Museum was opened and we spent over three hours going through its many rooms, after which we visited the largest mosque in India, the courtyard has enough room for 25,000 worshipers. While in the district surrounded by the mosque we had a lunch of street food which set us back a grand total of 66cents. We just arrived back in the area of our hotel and spotted a cypercafe and thought we would take a little time to update you on our happenings. Most of the day tomorrow we will spend in Delhi, in the evening, around 8PM we will board the 2nd class sleeper car of a train to begin the first leg of our trip to Nepal. More on that when we get there.