Day 65: November 8. A Whole New World...

We arrived in Delhi at 3:45 am. We wandered around airport, collecting our luggage and trying to figure out where we were going. The lock on Alicias bag was open probably from a security check and so Karla made her look through it for stashed drugs. You just can't be too sure. After telling her some horror stories about stashed drugs in boogie boards in Indonesia, she made a thorough search. We couldn't get our phones to work, so we found a pay phone, and called a hotel. Luckily they had room.

Heeding the warning about taxi scams over the loudspeaker, we hired a cab from the pre-pay booth in the airport, and arrived safely at our hotel. The time was 6:30 am. We passed out til noon.

When we awoke, we tried to plan out our stay in India. We got as far as planning the next 4 days. This is real progress for us!

Next, we went to the train station to get tickets for tomorrow. We almost fell victim to a tout, who tried to convince us that the ticket office was across from the train station, but remembering what we read in the book and what the man at our hotel had said, we walked into the train station one more time to find the right office. Phew! We booked tickets to Agra and Udaipur, then walked back toward our hotel.

On the way, we got distracted by the little shops selling all sorts of textiles. Karla bought a lamp-shade and pants, and Alicia bought herself a scarf. Not that she'll need it here...but its beautiful and cheap and awesome....

Next we went to dinner at a little touristy cafe called Sam's. We tried to be more adventurous, but we couldn't find the restaurant that we were aiming for. Oh well. We had a bit of a scare anyway because we ordered mango lassis after asking the waiter whether there was water in them. He (and another waiter) assured us that there was no water, but when we got them, we saw ice (after we started drinking!) But he again assured us that the ice was boiled water. We're keeping our fingers crossed. Karla was about to start taking antibiotics right away just to avoid being sick one more time. But turned out just fine.

Next on our list was a movie. We were already late, so we hired a bicycle rickshaw for about $0.50, and made our way to the theater. Getting in was quite a process - Alicia got frisked (by a female police woman), and Karla got all her snacks taken away after the most thorough bag-search either of us had ever seen. Both of our worst nightmares.

The movie was hilarious. We had intended to go to a traditional Bollywood film, but the names of the actors was all we had to go on, so we ended up seeing a modern Hindi comedy called 'Golmaal Returns'. It was super-dramatic and hilarious to try to follow along. And it was loong! There was even an intermission! We had fun, although we still want to see a Bollywood musical! At least there was an amazing group dance scene.

What an interesting first day in India...
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