journeying out of Delhi

Hi Team,

Sorry for the delayed post – I seem to be suffering from a bit of “Delhi belly” which has been good times. I’m still not feeling great but the fact that I can sit up and be at the computer is a vast improvement.

So after working at least 12 days in a row we finally realized last week that we had a potential two days with a limited workload and decided to really go crazy and give ourselves a weekend. In order to celebrate, Little Ditty and I headed up north to Amritsar, in the state of Punjab. To get there we took the overnight train, which was kind of a cool experience in itself. The definite plus side was that we took the sleeper car, so we could actually lie down and sleep. The negative side was that the windows were open so anytime we passed another train it was so loud and the train shook so bad there was no way you could actually sleep for more than an hour at a time. And then there were these Chai-men who walked through the cars at all hours of the night shouting “Chaaaaaaai Chaaaaaaaaaai Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaai” like the peanut guys at baseball games. I don’t know why they thought that at 3am if they just shouted a little louder someone would wake up and buy their tea. I think they need a new business plan.

Anyway we arrived in Amritsar and headed to the Golden Temple, which is what the town is most famous for. It’s a Sikh temple that is the largest in all of India and is absolutely breathtaking. The coolest part is that while you are in the temple there is constantly a priest on a microphone chanting these soothing rhythms that are blasted out over the whole complex, which was such a relief from the usual sounds of India (cars and honking horns).

Oddly enough even though Amritsar is a big tourist destination our skin color made us pretty big celebrities there. We are now in pictures on numerous cameras throughout India, which is unlucky for those folks since none of us had showered in a few days and were definitely not pulling off the mandatory head coverings very well. It was also adorable because little kids would come up to us and stick out their hands and give us a handshake and then look mortified and giggle and run back to their parents – so cute!

To top off our day we ate dinner in an Indian restaurant that was going for a sort of 1950s American diner theme and playing all this great throwback 1980s soft rock including but not limited to Celine Dion’s My Hear Will Go On. Yessss.

Anyway, we’re back in Delhi now and my current goal is to be able to stay awake for more than four hours in a row and then who knows? Maybe even be able to keep down solid foods? Well I don’t want to get too ambitious.