July 5, 2013 crossing the street at rush hour!

July 5, 2013

This morning I left the hotel in a group of five.  Our first feat was to cross four lanes of traffic going both directions.  Traffic does not yield for pedestrians.  Terrifying?  Yes.  Catherine and I held hands and gave one another directions "watch out for that bus...BMW, motorized bicycle, Tuk Tuk!  We made it and I told Catherine "thanks, my daughter will appreciate still having a mother".  She responded "and my mother will appreciate having a daughter".  Then we took a series of trains on the subway.  There are only two men in our group and they were with us.  They may have claw marks down their arms from us grabbing them.  Security is very tight everywhere.  No photos in the subways, body and bag scans.  Our first train was full of business and working men.  On our second train there were women and students.  Our men asked questions and for directions and people were very helpful.  We made the day of a nine year school boy who said "Hey, hey, good to see you".  At our final subway stop we decided to take a Tuk Tuk because we were afraid we would have to cross too many streets.  We negotiated a price of fifty rupees, about a dollar and all five of us got in the little Tuk Tuk.  He took us around the corner, about a block.  We laughed a lot about that.

We were supposed to be "resting" at the hotel for the morning so were very happy to have made it to the Akshardham shrine and to have had an every day Delhi experience, though we enjoy our British Raj Hotel experience too:).  We couldn't take photos inside the shrine which was fabulous, especially the many elephants each carved out of a two ton stone (we can't all agree on this fact, big stones anyway).  We had to check everything before entry.  We were nervous about that, but this was very official.  Our party of five had to pose together with our assorted iPads, cameras, phones and bags at check in and check out.  We bought one photo of the shrine together and then took our pictures of that.  Ever the frugal teachers.  We made it back to the Taj for our full course lunch.  Most of mine was two bottles of water and two cups of tea; 60%Darjeeling and 40% Assam (northern India regions).

Our afternoon was a few lectures, a US Embassy security briefing and a formal reception.  We all messed up on our Internet use and so now we are trying to get back on not track!  So many things to figure out!