Monkey See. Monkey Do.

It's the fourth of February and the sun is shining in the mountains and the temperature is almost at 60 degrees by 10 am. We have been picked up by the driver and guide at our hotel and are heading up to Jakhu Hill Temple on the pinnacle of the mountain. We were advised to have the hotel pack us a lunch, since we will be gone the entire day. Our "lunch" is presented in two white boxes tied with a pink bow. The boxes are a foot square and 6 inches deep! We will not be able to finish all of this and indeed end up sharing our fare with the driver and Sanjeev.

Jakhu Hill Temple is devoted to Hanuman, the monkey god. Our young waiters, Truth and Love, advise us at breakfast that, indeed, the temple grounds are swarming with monkeys. They caution me to take off my eyeglasses because the monkeys love them and will steal them off of my head. They also caution us not to carry any food out where it can be seen. I was a bit puzzled because we were finishing a rather hefty plate of fresh fruit and I couldn't imagine being hungry again in another hour. But all would become clear very soon.

I thought that the "drive" up to Simla yesterday was tough. Today is the trial by fire. Because there is no traffic allowed on the Mall, the driver must double-back and take single lane ( and I use the term "lane" very loosely) alleyways around the city proper. These are the only access to some residences and they dip and twist around buildings at unreasonable angles of descent. Jakhu Temple is at the other end of town and up another couple hundred feet or more. There are seven or eight acute switchbacks which require the driver to execute a three point turn on a life threatening precipice. A small error puts the wheels over the edge and it's sayonara to the home crowd. The vehicle for today is a standard shift. You get the picture.

Surviving the road, we arrive at a beautiful gate to the temple grounds. We are greeted by several monkeys who scamper on ahead of us and leap from railing to step to tree. We are not approached by them and I can't help but be fascinated by the little ones riding atop the adults. They are just cute as hell and much more athletic than us (the two geezers that are looking at several hundred feet of an uphill climb in an environment that is already 8,000 ft. above sea level). Wasn't bad, taken slowly, and the mountain air was delicious. We arrive at a view that is a show stopper.

The Himalayas spread out around us in all directions. Perched atop this peak is a multi-colored-spandangled-Hansel-and-Gretel-treat that is the temple to Hanuman. We climb a few more steps, take off our shoes and enter gingerly. In the center of the room is a platform with a "fireplace" type structure niched into the wall at its other end. In the center of the platform sits the holy man in black trousers and a tattered vest. Around him and the small fire burning, are all types of trinkets and pottery and symbolic items that are a mystery to us. He has in front of him a bowl with corn and grain of some sort. Sanjeev kneels and speaks to the man in Hindi and then gives him a money offering for the temple. In return, he is given a handful of the food mixture as a type of blessing. Aha! The monkeys obviously know that this is what has been going on for centuries in this little establishment and will be waiting for him when we exit the building. Sanjeev then gives a tour about the room and explains the story of Hanuman as depicted in the wall murals. As we are leaving, a toddler with his grandfather enters the room and the young child becomes totally mesmerized by our foreign look and talk. Grandpa encourages the child to offer me a hand to touch. But I am touched by the kindness, trust and generosity.

There are two other smaller temple buildings to investigate and we also stop to watch the monkey antics. A very peaceful place. I hated to leave so soon, especially since the only way back down off the mountain was the horror show of clutch and brake.

Off to Kufri animal sanctuary. As we travel up another mountain, the scenery takes on a whole new flavor. More and more often we are seeing the roadway give way to people on horseback rather than behind a wheel. Soon there are large stands of horses by the wayside, saddled and ready to go but without a rider. Now, I have been quiet and endured terror for the sake of beauty and adventure and everyone's sanity. I have also been inside of a large, heavy metal container that has some protective quality to it. Lurching down the sides of steep mountain grades on horseback is real fodder (pardon me for that) for nightmares. I mention to Tucker.....softly, mind you...that I'm not so sure about ......

Sanjeev turns in his seat and says, "I figured that I wouldn't even ask you about the pony ride. But would you like to see the zoo?" What a wonderful man. We pass on the zoo and opt for tea on the terrace at the Wildflower Hotel. The Wildflower is as beautiful as the Oberoi Cecil. It is located at the end of a long passageway straight up to the top of another mountain crest. I do feel like a monkey hopping from one vantage point to the other today. We are treated graciously and like royalty. Monkey Gods from the States are given Tea and Biscuits. So sane. Such a gorgeous view. Such a beautiful day.

The Mall Rats Find True Love

Just to backpedal slightly, I need to mention how Max added significantly to the local color on the way to Simla, turning shades of green and purple as the driver played Himalayan Chicken and the guide pointed out a gondola stretched high above a large valley. Apparently a few years ago, the gondola had some problems and the passengers had to be rescued by helicopter. Except for the acrophobic gentleman who couldn't stand the fear and just jumped. "He did the right thing, " says Max. The guides kept encouraging us to stop and take a picture of the vistas but when we finally concur, we realize they both just needed to run behind a tree and take a leak.

We finally arrive in Simla (4 hours, 80 miles). Our hotel is at the western end of the main drag, called The Mall. Simla (pronounced "Shimla" and also sometimes spelled that way) became the summer capital of the British government in India in 1864, as the Brits needed to escape the heat and humidity of Delhi and Calcutta. It's the capital of Himachal Pradesh, literally "Snow Province", but we have unusually clear and sunny weather in the low 60's.

Our hotel, the Oberoi Cecil is, as my father would say, a lodge that "had a chance and took it". It belongs in the Himalayas, but is elegant. We're seated in the lounge while Sanjeev checks us in and we're given hot towels to refresh, then escorted to our room by a lovely young assistant manager. The room is smaller than The Imperial, but just as nice, with a view of both The Mall and the Himalayas.

After decompressing with a scotch, we head off to become Mall rats. The walk into town along The Mall is fascinating. It's Saturday evening and everyone is out. There's lots of laughter, no traffic (it's banned on The Mall), great people watching, no beggars - a very laid-back un-Delhi kind of atmosphere. As it becomes dark, the lights come on, the crowds get louder, it's almost a party atmosphere as we drink in the aromas of roadside food vendors cooking in huge wok-like receptacles for the Saturday night crowd. There are monkeys everywhere, scampering down the steep alleys leading to the lower streets, carrying babies on their backs. It's one of those Magic Travel Moments.

Back at the Cecil, we have dinner in an almost deserted restaurant. The chicken caesar salad is made with a delicious spicy chicken. When we order drinks, we are given the choice of regular or large. We've seen the paltry splashes of scotch considered "regular", so we order "large". Apparently, this means they increase the serving size to 1 1/2 oz. instead of 1 oz. For about $11 each. Our beds have been readied, curtains closed, fruit delivered and we're definitely ready for bed. What a day.

Sunday: In today's news, 20 labourers were crushed to death in Mumbai when a wall they were working on collapsed. Once again, tragedy only deserved a page 20, two-inch column story. This incident doesn't surprise us. We've seen India's construction methods. To build a second concrete story, they prop up 4x8 sheets of plywood with tree branches and then pour the cement on top. Their scaffolding is made on the spot by lashing bamboo stalks together.

The best part of the Sunday paper was the Matrimonials section. These are pages of ads placed not for companionship, but for marriage. They are organized in sections. If you are searching for some one in your caste, you have your ad in the "caste" section. Same for religion, locality and language. Some of the ads mention that they've been married before, but it was only a "Visa Marriage". This doesn't mean the wedding was paid for by credit card, but rather refers to a marriage that allowed them to get an American visa, or green card. The ads use the words "girl" and "boy", because there are so many marriages that are still arranged at a very early age. The guys invariably ask for a "very beautiful girl", although many of their ads are placed by the family, the boy being too young.

B'fast is served by two young handsome lads (see photo above), who tell us their names mean "Truth" and "Love" and then stand side by side, point to each other and chime "true love!" The food is delicious and includes waffles served with hot ghee, syrup, Australian bacon, sweet lime juice and small slices of apple in a devonshire cream and jam.

It's time to collect our box lunches and hit the road with Sanjeev.

And now for something completely different

We're off to Simla via the train to Chandigarh, followed by a four hour car ride up into the mountains. This is the beginning of my intiation into the real world of India's extremes in both culture and environment. I know that I will continue to be amazed and shocked and scared and thrilled and awestruck. But I really wasn't prepared for today.

Leaving the station in Delhi was just the beginning. The plastic tents and corrugated tin huts that serve as home to the destitute appear as clusters between industrial looking buildings. Small fires are lit in several areas, around which people are cooking or warming themselves. Just another type of pollutant to add to the Delhi blanket of fog, diesel fumes, smoke and dust. Delhi's pollutants are palpable. We'll be glad to breathe the mountain air. Men squat over the empty rails with pants about their knees. My window seat becomes the TV screen showing the PBS documentary on India's rural natives.

We arrive in Chandigarh to a loud and crazy station where we must find guide and driver. The noise and diesel fumes are worse than Delhi. So much for assumptions. Hundreds of motorcycles choke the parking lot and streets. It is the first time that I see a woman driving her own cycle...sidesaddle...in a sari and sweater. In fact, many of the residents are wearing winter coats and it is in the low 60s (fahrenheit). It is in our itinerary to be taken to the Taj Mahal Hotel for lunch. It is 11:45 and they are not prepared for the lunch buffet quite yet so we wander the hotel a bit. It was built in the 1960s and was a marvel at the time, I am sure, complete with manufactured concrete "waterfalls" in the garden. The hotel has had some refurbishing but looks like it needs a major overhaul. The water sculptures do not have water moving through them and the tables in the dining area have "mod" formica tops with plastic form chairs on stainless steel legs. The dinnerware and napkins are in loden green, oranges and yellow ochres with geometric patterns from the 60s. It would appear kitsch, except that these are the originals and well worn. A young gentleman brings us a diet Coke with two glasses, sets them down in the middle of the table and then leaves. We are astounded and shocked. We sit stock still, mouths agape and afraid to make a move. This is a major gaff. Only the fourth day into our trip and I realize that we have become accustomed to a level of service everywhere in India that we simply do not see at home.

COMMERCIAL BREAK: Some thoughts on the gentry. Tucker and I have discussed the weird, somewhat guilty feeling we first had at the royal treatment we're being given. One first feels that it's a mistake...must have the wrong people. If nothing else, India has learned and perfected the art of service with grace. They anticipate your needs and deliver the solution quietly and with pride and care. This is not done obsequiously. Indians who are fortunate, clever, hard-working and able to learn English can obtain a service job in a good hotel, restaurant, or any tourist-frequented facility. They see themselves as being in training for a good career that will reap them good rewards. The British have obviously left their mark. The thing is, we have paid for this service and are more than pleased with the level of service that we have been given. It feels good, makes one feel generous and helps make a permanent transition over to expecting reasonable service for the dollars spent. Imagine an American youngster thinking that they could make a good living by starting in a service job. Not.

Back to our story. The lunch was fine. The maitre'd noticed our predicament and immediately corrected the situation by bringing us napkins and pouring the beverage into the glass. She asked us if we needed ice and we received a token cube or two. (The Brits don't believe in alot of ice either. Another story) We begin to realize that this hotel is a training facility for hotel management staff. Chandigarh is the fastest growing city in Rahjastan because the computer service industry is employing thousands here. They must be expecting to build many new hotels here as well.

Off to Simla. Our guide, Sanjeev, is the nicest man in the world. He took very good care of us and was immensely proud of his career and his country. He has a cleft palate, we work a little harder to understand him and we gain a huge respect for this man who decides that working with the public in a fairly intimate way is something that he could master. And he did. And had a sense of humor. Our driver says not a word , but laying a finger aside of his nose....up the chimney he rose. I will feel the need to kiss the man later.

We now come to the Let's-scare-the-pants-off-Max part of the program. I'm acrophobic. I don't like looking over the edge of very high things, starting with a ten foot ladder. My husband guesses, correctly, that it best not to talk about this section of our journey ahead of time. There are NO guidelines for how many lanes are on a road, how fast you will drive that road, how many vehicles can travel in the same direction at one time, and how you should negotiate blind curves. The natives have only one prerequisite for use of a vehicle. A good, loud horn. The road we are taking appears to be almost two lanes, by our standards. The road hugs the face of very steep mountains. The road has many hairpin turns and no guardrails, but a few large rocks painted white are there for night driving (I refuse to ever drive here at night! Are you crazy!?) and a false sense of security. There are no roadsigns that prepare you for circumstances in the road ahead. There are quite a few signs, however, that admonish drivers to be vigilant. DRIVE CAREFULLY: ACCIDENTS ARE CERTAIN DEATH.

My hand is clenched to the bar above the door. I pray for a quick and sudden death. I try to appreciate the scenery, which is drop-dead gorgeous as long as I focus on big vistas. Do not look down! Look to the wall of the mountain, for there is nothing on the other side. The valleys are terraced, beautiful and I never saw the bottom after a couple hours. You see, you can't help but look. And I die a thousand tiny deaths as my bone marrow turns to mush.

This is how it works. When approaching a blind curve, the driver will purposely move over into the ONCOMING lane in order to get some view of approaching danger. He will then blow the horn in one long contiuous barrage in hopes that impending collisions can be avoided by the OTHER GUY HEARING THE HORN AND GIVING WAY to his vehicle. Sometimes we would stop suddenly, inches from a face of stone, in order to be obliging. If traffic coming at you was three cars abreast and occupying ALL of the road space, then several short bursts of horn fire would be given to prepare them to make a decision of some kind. When you're body is in a petrified state, your eyes and ears pay close attention to details. I will have to learn some kind of trust in order to survive the next four days. I do. But my body ached every night from the tension.

I manage decorum. I do not kiss the earth or the driver upon arrival. The hotel is magnificent. The view is of Shangrila. And I fall deeply in love with Simla.

The Spice Route and the Lose Your Cookies Route

It's our last night at The Imperial and we're sad enough about leaving the best hotel in the world, but then we head down for our meal at Daniel's one of the hotel's restaurants that was designated for our meal that night. We stop to look into The Spice Route, another restaurant in the hotel, rated by Conde Naste as one of the top 10 restaurants in the world.

When we ask to have a look inside, the hostess invites us to have dinner, using our voucher for Daniel's, but we'd be having the "Special Menu". I figure this means we'll be having a pine float and coffee, but it turns out to be quite different.

For every 10 times your flight is cancelled, your luggage is lost, or your dinner reservation falls between the cracks, you get a serendipitous bonus, which is what we got this Delhi night.

We're presented with the "Special Menu" and choose one of 2 soups, one of four main courses and one of two desserts. But when we order, we're told there is no choice. We get everything, and everything is wonderful. We can't come close to finishing any course, but the flavors are extraordinary, the service, Imperial.

The restaurant decor is mesmerizing. After the meal, we get a 20 minute tour of the restaurant with the hostess. It's about 11 PM and dinner has taken 2 1/2 hours. Construction of the restaurant took 7 years to complete. The walls are solid art work in various media, including sculptures, wooden blocks, boats, (yeah, boats), crowns, statues. Sounds over the top, but it worked. All art work is relevant to various destinations on the original Spice Route from India to Bali, including Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam, and the food reflects the cuisine of these countries. The restaurant has nine distinct areas that blend into each other seamlessly, and was designed with the the Feng Shui of the site carefully considered. For us, it was a dining memory we will never forget.

The next morning we're up early (late for Max, it was 4:30). I feel melancholy to be leaving this wonderful old gracious hotel. Prandesh and the driver meet us and get us to the New Delhi Train Station in time for our 7 AM departure for Simla, via Chandigarh. It's already a mob scene with red-shirted porters tapping on our car window as soon as we enter the station parking lot.

It's still dark because of the fog and haze, with a full moon, which should be beautiful in Simla. When I was here in '86, it was reported in the Hindustan Times that Delhi was the most polluted city in the world. I believe it has managed to retain the title after all these years.

We're in coach C-6, seats 64 and 65, our names printed on a sheet of paper on the side of the train. It's a bit grimy. Full house. A bunch of bizmen going to Chandigarh, our transfer point.

Going thru the Old Delhi slums at dawn in the early morning haze, with smoldering fires, smoldering garbage, people abluting everywhere - amazing stuff. And Max is loving it.

We're served a B'fast of a sort as soon as we're moving. First, a liter of bottled water, then tea and biscuits and candy (sugar-free!). An hour later, they come by with more food - a couple of deep-fried items with peas, a sandwich of some sort, juice, rice.

Chandigarh is only a couple of hours away.

After that, it's the Lose Your Cookies Route.

It's good to be the Queen.

I have awakened "early again" except that it is 4:30 am instead of 2 am. Making progress on the jet lag, but I have had alot of time to study the bathroom as I spend these morning hours among fluffed up pillows in the bathtub reading the rest of the novel I started. (I will address my obligatory bathroom review later. This was a nice one.)

Tucker was correct in remembering that my garment arrived at 11:30 last evening. I was measured for my costume at 11:30 am two days previously. That's service. (It would get better in Simla.) He did mistake the name for my new Indian dress. It is called a choodidar and is a long tunic slit to the hip and worn over leggings that fit tightly about the lower leg, accompanied by a long chiffon scarf. I chose an emerald green silk fabric with a black and gold border and an overall small gold medallion design. This is one of the most comfortable garments I have ever worn, once one gets used to how to manage the six foot scarf. The top of the leggings are very loose and held with a drawstring. The Indian women know how to dress comfortably, look feminine and make a peacock statement. I was fascinated by the bold colors and patterns that I could see everyday and in every way. They wear saris to do laundry in the river and carry baskets of produce home on their heads from the market. Or a choodidar or salwar kameez to run daily errands or have lunch with a friend. Their preference for oranges, magentas, bright pinks, lime greens and turquoise blues was an electrifying feast for the eyes if you have been on a steady diet of LL Bean khaki or Eddie Bauer faded blue.

We eat at 1911 in the hotel. It has a fabulous breakfast buffet every morning, which includes an omelet station, REALLY freshly squeezed orange juice and everything else that either a British or Indian resident might covet for their start to the day. And then we return to the emporium to exchange some saris that I bought for use as window treatments when we get home. Haggling over goods in an open market is very difficult for a Westerner accustomed to fixed prices and labels which disclose everything including the number of the inspection agent!! Having nothing to reference and very little on the internet to give one guidance in these matters, I resort to translating rupees into dollars and then comparing what I know about the price of said object in the States. If it is better than at home and of equal quality, than I don't care if I am contributing more than my fair share to the local economy. The problem comes when you suddenly get to REALLY interact with a helpful "salesperson". You will be shown dozens, if not hundreds of items (in this case, yards of fabric and all types of fabric), and you will always be given the pitch to buy multiples in order to save money. This is done at a regular clip, which is far too fast for a foreigner who is still trying to compute costs on the first item. I found myself instinctively trying to be way too polite and accommodating than is reasonable for this system of doing business. It takes practice to be a bargainer and "play the game" so that everyone feels satisfied at the end. More than a few weeks. So I became overwhelmed with trying to "feel out" my responsibility in the process and didn't really take the time to look at all my options and choose the fabric I really wanted. And I obsessed over this in the bathtub while trying to read. The good news is that there wasn't a problem exchanging the saris for ones I preferred. And I'm sure that I paid too much and am ashamed of that now. But I knew nothing at the beginning and am lousy at bargaining in someone else's arena. We will find out later on in our excursion through Rahjastan, that the guides counted on us not having enough time to bargain properly. They were obviously getting kickbacks. Too bad, because we were just getting to be better at the haggle.

We return to the hotel and then head out for Connaught Circle, which is really 3 concentric circular streets. Picture a bullseye in the center of town and you have the feeling of this space, which is a middle class shopping area and business center. That means that the cement cubicle that houses the enterprise has a window or screening on the front opening. There were pharmacies, motorcycle dealers, appliance repair centers, hair salons and a McDonald's. We went in for a Coke. There was a large flat screen TV behind a group of young people that displayed Indian music videos. McDonald's in India offers tandoori burgers and an aloo pateen wrap. We passed.

Instead, we take a long, slow walk back to the hotel. Both of us are in heaven. India TV at its best with plenty of time to digest, look, feel and smell the world on this special spot. Hawkers display rugs and saris over fences, women in saris are helping to build a new store by carrying bricks and mortar (on a board balanced on their heads) up a rickety bamboo ladder, horns blast all around us in an effort to get us to give up our two feet of walking space and children follow us everywhere in an effort to practice their English well enough to get a few rupees for the trinkets they are trying to sell. I love, love, love this part of travel. Meditation in Motion. Sensory bombardment.

Back at the hotel. A Kingfisher beer (excellent) and a late lunch on the outdoor patio of the Imperial. Behind the wall one can hear the noise and desperation of Delhi street life. At the same time one can feast on seafood ragout and white chocolate coconut cake. We don't have a clue yet about what great food and atmosphere there is to be had here. The Spice Route will be our gift from the You-Deserve-A-Perfect-Day gods. (we'll save that for tomorrow)

Old Delhi - A Microcosm of Urban India

Our guide, Sunil, arrives at the hotel at 10 AM, then goes looking for his driver, who is probably off smoking while he can. Our first stop is the Jama Masjid, the largest Moslem mosque in India. We take our shoes off at the gate, pay 200 rupees ($4.75) for the privelege of taking our cameras in, and 20 rupees to have the Shoe Guy guard our shoes. Everywhere we went in India there was a fee for video cameras, but seldom for still cameras. This will change once they realize there is a disappearing line between cameras, phones, ipods and video cameras.

The Jama Masjid was built in 1656 by the emperor Shah Jahan, also the builder of the Red Fort and the Taj Mahal, thus making him single handedly responsible for a good portion of Indian tourism. It's a very imposing building, with a courtyard that will hold thousands of prostrate worshipers, but not nearly as striking as some of the structures we will be seeing later in the trip.

Once we leave the JM, we get on cycle rickshaws (they're not allowed in New Delhi and man-pulled rickshaws have recently been banned in the only city in the world that had still allowed them - Calcutta.) We start off on what seems to be streets teeming with humanity and vehicles, including wheelbarrows, cars, bullocks pulling carts, bicycles, motorcycles - you name it. Then it got interesting.

We wheeled off into side streets and then lanes. The teeming humanity became gridlock humanity that managed to ooze past each other in peristaltic movements. On streets that were barely 10 feet wide, often with people selling things from a staked out portion of the road, adding to the difficulty of progressing. Yet progress we did, with no one complaining when the bicycle rickshaw scraped against whatever was going in the opposite direction, or bumped over a piece of merchandise being displayed on the road serface. It was like a drive-thru mall. We could literally have shopped for anything India offers, from the comfort of our rickshaw as it passed tiny stalls selling saris, appliances, food for every taste, hubcaps....well, you get the whole idea.

Overhead, the sky was criss-crossed with the most amazing electrical arrangements you could imagine, a black tangle of spaghetti thrown against what little of the daylight you could see in the urban jungle we were moving thru. Call me cynical, but I suspect there may have been an illegal hook-up somewhere in the mess. For some people, this is their world. I can't imagine.

Back in the Toyota, we are taken for the obligatory carpet/crafts stop at a "government emporium". Sunil tells us the Indian government has asked all guides to do this to help out with the Tibetan refugees. I don't believe a word of it, and we spend a token few minutes B4 heading out.

Lunch is at the Chor Bizarre, a well-respected Old Delhi restaurant. Sunil explains that "Chor" means "tea". I always thought "chai" meant "tea" in India, but I don't argue, because "bizarre" definitely doesn't mean "bazarre" either. Sunil tells us "People like this name very much" It reminds Max and I of the sign in Seoul Korea - "Bevery Hills".

Food was OK, but not hot enough. I get into a discussion with Sunil about whether I'm supposed to buy him lunch. I have no problem with this, I just want to know the protocol. He tells me guides eat and stay free wherever they take people. I ask what nationalities he likes to work with. Naturally, he says Americans are the best (he hasn't received my tip yet) because they don't question the itinerary and says Germans and Dutch are the worst because they do. Japanese are easy, because they don't speak Hindi or English and can be taken anywhere and they won't know the difference. I thought Sunil probably should have omitted this last. It told me too much about him.

We stopped briefly at the largest Hindu Temple in India. Sunil is Hindu and was mildly pissed off that almost every site we were scheduled to see was Muslim. He started the tour explaining that there were only 3 gods in the Hindu religion, then went on to explain the several other gods we encountered in the tour who were reincarnations or other forms of these gods. Subsequent guides have just gone with the 33,000 god figure.

Last stop was Humayun's tomb, built by a relieved widow in 1565 and used as an inspiration for the gates to the Taj.

Back at the hotel, I overtip Sunil and the driver and we settle in for the night early - the jet lag thing. We're interrupted twice B4 we finally get to sleep. once for our laundry delivery and once for the delivery of the Salwar Kameez Max had made for her yesterday.

Overwhelm me, please

"This is a commercial interruption. We will resume our regular programming shortly."

I had been hinting to my husband for many years now that I would like to get to India one day. After seeing the slides that he took of his train journey here 20 years ago, I have been fascinated with the color, the architecture and the sheer exotic nature of the culture. India has not let me down. In fact, I don't think one can prepare themselves for the totality of the sensual and emotional thrill ride that is part of visiting the subcontinent.

I dedicate this entry to my husband. Thanks to him for the hours he spent researching and setting up this entire trip. The accomodations were excellent, the weather moderate and the movie was great! We would joke about "India T.V." because it always felt like you were floating through a movie set in a surreal dream. Every corner had an interesting tidbit to mull over if you worked hard at looking and listening to everything your brain could process every minute of the day on the street. I always thought that Tucker happened to get lucky and come upon an eccentric sadhu every so often, which produces National Geographic quality photo ops for the friends at home. What I found is that this is the norm for India. Every street of every day of every hour was chock full of PBS special dramas for your own private viewing. It was also exhausting, but addictive. The great hotels were necessary to give oneself some recovery time from the sensory overload that is India. The guides were critical at the beginning, but they became annoying and tedious later on in the journey. As time went on, it became clear that I was developing a love/hate relationship with India. She is a Siren and a Harpy. And my husband was magnanimous to share Her with me on his 60th birthday.

These are my impressions of Delhi, as I wrote them in my journal after our first day in India. They will apply to every city:

"Delhi is a dichotomy of sensations that defies explanation and leaves you wondering how the damned thing continues to run and pulse on continuously. Crowded, dirty, smoggy. Fast-paced at one moment, slow and tedious the next. Exciting and colorful. Squalid beauty. Intimidating aliveness. Compelling, yet repulsive. Devout and unethical. Friendly and challenging. Noisy. Magnificent ancient architecture neglected to the point of tawdriness. Life. Rebirth. Deadness and decay."

If you are thinking that this could describe alot of other places, you are wrong. India is an in-your-face, this is real life survival, welcome to the good, bad and ugly every-minute-right-out-on-the-street experience. I loved it. It also made me sad. And I did have a day when I cried for India. India did not have that brand-new-starting-over-in-our-own-special-place history that Americans love to be so proud of. Try adjusting to a legacy of thousands of years of conquering moguls treating you like peons and raping the land of all of its wealth and promise for their own personal pleasure and power. This culture is still trying to recover from ages of medieval management. I applaud their smiles and their pride in the forts and palaces that are part of their history. I am not surprised by the many levels of intolerance the population has for differing castes and religions. The Beatles only showed us the hari krishna version. One simply cannot visit another culture and impose your own values upon it. We saw quite a few "ugly American" types. India isn't white bread, folks. But if you want to be exhilarated, surprised, captivated, enticed and intriqued.....visit India.

And the FOOD. (I promise you that I do not weigh in at 250 lbs., but you have to appreciate a good culinary experience.) Birthday Boy's dinner was at one of the hotel restaurants. Excellent meal. Naan and chutneys and mint yogurt for appetizers. I ordered the tandoori chicken and Tucker had a curried lamb in brown gravy. There were some entertainers on a small stage. One played the bongos, another the sitar and the last played a piano-like squeezebox item. Nice atmosphere. Deep fried cottage cheese with a sweet syrup for dessert and Indian "ice-cream", which only ressembles Ben and Jerry's because it is cold. The sauces were lighter than we have had at home. But then, American Chinese food doesn't belong in the same family as what we had in Taipei and HongKong. We were careful to avoid any food on the street. But we should have tried the deep-fried samosas prepared all over India. It might have given us some "after shocks", but then India is a love/hate relationship.