I decided to go on a quick tour around the north before I start my work. I'm in Delhi now, which is way more tourist-y than all the other places I've visited. This is good and bad... it means lots of tourist scams, and lots of people looking to make a quick buck off of you.

But it also means some time with other travellers. I have really enjoyed just hanging out with locals that I've met, but it's SO good to talk to people who speak english well, and who can tell me stories of their travels, who share my incredulity at some of the things that the locals take for granted, and who don't have a language barrier preventing the exchange of humour.

I like laughing.

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Took a rickshaw back to my guesthouse last night, and the guy kept his hand ON THE HORN the ENTIRE drive. Half an hour. He only stopped once, to roll a cigarette, which wasn't any better because this is not the kind of traffic where you'll feel comfortable about your driver not paying attention to the road.

I saw the Taj Mahal yesterday - one of the seven wonders of the world - and it was as beautiful as I'd heard. Stunning, in fact.

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Delhi is so crowded. In the words of Clark Blaise: "The streets are pumping people. The sidewalks are hemorrhaging.... one begins choking on people"

The dust and heat are overwhelming.. it was 36 degrees yesterday before adding the humidex. I breathe shallowly, through my mouth, trying to minimize intake of odours.

I find it necessary to make frequent forays into air conditioned places that I can access simply because i am foreign. Hotel lobbies, internet cafes, travel agencies, airline offices. Not so much to escape the heat, but for the sudden disappearance of dust, noise, smell. The air feels cleaner. The atmosphere is sterile and North American. No flies, no hawkers, no beggars in this rarified air.

These are all the things that make india so interesting, and they are the things that sometimes threaten to choke me. The best way to sum up my experience in India is that it's difficult to get things done. I find myself on an emotional high that lasts for hours after successfully completing a menial task - like making a phone call (not so easy in a country where numbers change frequently and arbitrarily). Booking a train ticket on my own is enough to convince me that I'm a travelling goddess who can conquer the world.
This euphoria inevitably lasts only until the next roadblock - such as mailing postcards, which took me four hours this morning.

I am going to the Himalayas tomorrow.

3:30 a.m. - 2003-05-15