Delhi

Some of our posts might not make so much sense because we have been writing in a journal and then copying parts of those journal entries onto the blog. Sorry if it overlaps or has sections missing.

Feb - 10

Today wasn't really the best but after 4 or 5 rolls of toilet paper (keeping in mind that Indian rolls are a gimmic) we don't feel like dying... so that is positive. Delhi is a bit of an assault on the brain. More honking than Mumbai, drugs, scams, pervs, accidents, and urine and garbage everywhere. The thing you notice first is the air quality. As we came in on the train it looked like we were entering an area just south of a forest fire. The weirdest thing is that your lungs seem to adapt to the smoke and dust. You also learn how to sleep through constant erratic noise and to be rude to touts which is probably only hard because we are Canadian. The day we arrived was a particular pain because with our packs it was really obvious that we were looking for somewhere to stay, not to mention that all the "reputable" hotels we tried seemed to be full. We even had a strange encounter with a friendly Australian guy who Don and I both think was acting as a tout. He took us to pretty abysmal accommodations down some shady alleyways which fortunately we didn't take. Once we got back on the main road it wasn't long before we found somewhere that would take us. Starving, Don and I killed a god part of our afternoon at our hotel's rooftop restaurant! We spent Tuesday doing a walking tour of "Old Delhi" seeing mosques and old forts but also seeing what could have once been a beautiful city, ravaged by population, pollution and poverty.

Feb 12

Boy oh boy am I sick! Last night I started shivering so violently it probably looked like I was having a seizure. I spent the whole night going to the bathroom and alternating between sweats and chills. I think Don and I might have liked Delhi better if we hadn't been so sick the whole time. It really gets you down! I felt so bad this morning that we considered not getting on our train and going to the hospital. We are on the train to Agra right now and the view is even more depressing. There are mountains of garbage, mostly plastic. It looks like wall-e's earth. Where the garbage is bad plants don't grow, grass doesn't grow. Cows try to graze between wrappers, dogs sleep on the mounds and children play in the filth.