"Daily, daily" --- from New Delhi, Indo

Some things that have happened:

Luke and I just got tea and pokoras (breakfast) from street vendors. A cool Indian guy nearby who spoke spotty English in a thick accent that made it very difficult to understand him invited us to share his bench, and we chatted with him for awhile about nothing important, his necklace, where to get great sweets, and some other stuff. He then asked us if we smoke ganja and told us to wait a second, he would go get his great stuff and come back with it. We were hesitant because while there doesn't actually seem to be rules or laws here, it is illegal and Indian prison can't be fun. Prison anywhere can't be fun. He didn't want any money or anything, saying: "No, no, no, its friendship. You are my big brothers. No, only brothers. No big, no small. We all brothers. I smoke the ganja to see God. When smoke, go 100 kilometers away. You wait, wait." So we kept eating our food and waited to see what would happen. He told ust that he smokes daily right where we were, on a bench off of Main Bazaar, a busy touristy area of New Delhi. It's basically a big marketplace. He came back and said one of his friends must have stolen it from him and that if we really wanted it we would have to go 20 km. away with him to get it. We weren't interested. He really tried to get us to follow him but since we have to check out today and we both wanted to use the internet, we told him we couldn't. Luke gave him a quarter as a souvenir (he had a necklace on made out of coins, and he showed us his Canadian dollar coin, which seemed to be the centerpiece, but told us he had no idea how much it was worth) and he asked me for my phone number so that after I got back to America, I could figure out what pills he needed to help him grow his hair back (he was bald on top and said he always wears his hat to hide it) and then he could call me and get the name of the medicine. I gave him my cell phone number in Japan even though I think he was in earnest, and Luke and I wrote our names down for him so he could remember us.

Right when we arrived we wandered around the city for a little bit and the poverty we saw (and continue to see) was quite extreme. On the side of a major highway we saw a homeless guy laying on his back, totally splayed out and one of his testicles had popped out through a hole in his shorts. He appeared to be asleep. There are lots of people begging, and last night on a tuk-tuk ride back from where Ghandi and Nehru's ashes are kept, I saw a man asleep at a bus stop, stark naked, and he had pissed himself. Luke met a young kid on his first night here and they were walking and talking together when they passed a big crowd of people. The kid looked at everyone standing around, quietly, and said "it must be a death." It turned out to be a crazy woman arguing with someone, but the fact that it COULD have been a death helps you to understand what its like here. While I've been warned about the poverty here, I've already had exposure to it, as I saw a woman squat down and piss under a tree in Kuala Lumpur, right on a busy road where traffic was backed up in both directions and most of the tourists stay in hotels and hostels.

It goes without saying that the food is indredible. A lot of it is fried which I'm not crazy about, but everything is great. We bought two cucumbers, spiced and with lemon juice on top, which were refreshing since its so damned hot here. We've been to this one restaurant, The Gem, just around the corner, twice for dinner and it has been incredible both times. Masala Chicken, Masala Thosai, some tofu dish, naan, pokoras and samosas, plenty of beer and whiskey, and other stuff that I couldn't name. I think it would be impossible to convey how great the food is to you. You'd have to come here and try it yourself.

We've already bought our train tickets to the border with Nepal and we leave tonight. Its a 12 hour train ride and we should arrive by 8am tomorrow, the 16th. We've been here for 2 full days already and chose to stay that long just because we couldn't find an available train any earlier. I feel as though we've seen as much of the city as we need to and when we return it will only be to fly home (if I come back with Luke on the 21st which I still haven't decided yet).

I guess that's about it. Oh yeah, and my Indian Airways Express flight, the one that should have taken off at 6:50am from Singapore and landed in Chennai at 1:30pm, left at 9:50am and landed at 8pm. Fantastic. The three days right before I met Luke, saw me sleeping on an overnight bus, in a chair in the Singapore airport, and then in a chair at the Chennai airport. I was so happy to have a bed in Delhi that words can't describe it.