Any local and some non-locals I have talked to all say the same thing, that I have picked a terrible time to visit India and I must be crazy to be here now. I disagreed with everyone except for the people from Delhi. I'll tell you why. Delhi is hosting the Common Wealth Games in October of this year, which means they are putting in 2 new metro lines and sprucing everything up. So all of the popular sites look like the arch pictured. Everything is torn up and there is scaffolding everywhere. Now, I could have look past that except for it also meant that going from any place to another meant about at 45 min wait in traffic. That I just can't tolerate. I'm a if-the-cab-doesn't-move-for-2-mins-get-out-and-walk kind of girl. So the long periods of time in the car drove me nuts. Especially because I was sightseeing by myself. All my loser tourist alarms were going off. I was always happy to get to walk around and take pictures of any random thing when I got out of the car though. Aha! Learning the motivations of my prey. This will come in handy when I'm back in New York with full on pedestrian rage. More Delhi tomorrow. Hopefully less Delhi-belly.Love,
Violet
I keep writing comments and then losing them because I want to check something you've written!
ReplyDeleteAnyway I think you're doing wonderfully well recording your "Western young woman in the 'mysterious East'" experiences, even the not-so-wonderful ones. Indeed "amusingly bizarre" (from an earlier blog), if taken seriously, isn't a bad way of summing-up your travelogue.
I know that gate in Delhi--it's by Lutyens, a famous Victorian/Edwardian architect. Google him and you'll see how famous and versatile he was--there's something called a "Lutyens bench" much admired by gardeners.
The Commonwealth is what the British Empire became when that empire disintegrated at the end of WWII. I suppose you'll be long gone when the Games start. Australia and New Zealand will surely have lots of athletes there and there are now a lot of what used be called dependencies who'll probably send just one or two. I wonder what India excels in (other than cricket.
Love, Grandpa
Love as always
BTW, your Dean's list letter came this week --congratulations!!
ReplyDeleteThanks mom. Grandpa- yes I will be gone, which is a shame because it seems like Delhi is going to be a whole new city when they finish the construction (if they finish, I should probably say). I'm sure it will be funny to see even more tourists roaming around, just like when we went to France during the rugby world cup. Everywhere we went we saw hoards of people in kilts.
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