We saw the Taj!

Well, we're here. After time spent in Agra (the nasty grubby city that is home of the world famous Taj Mahal), we made it to Delhi. I guess I should backtrack a little though...

Khajuraho. An interesting place. Known for their 10th-12th century massive temples, it is the erotic carvings of the kama sutra that draw many foreigners, domestic and international, to the area. It's located in the state of Madhya Pradesh, towards the north of India, and is a 3 hour ride by taxi from the nearest train junction, Jhansi, which is on the main line towards Agra and Delhi. We were lucky enough to meet a man in Darjeeling who worked at a hotel in Khajuraho, and when we rolled in at 10pm from Hyderabad to Jhansi, we called him up and took the advice that a taxi driven that late at night would get us to our final destination safely. We did indeed take a taxi (pretty costly but we weighed out the options...staying in Jhansi, a bustling city with hotels all booked up for some written examination the next day, or heading to Khajuraho, on a road free of traffic in a vehicle that would take 3 hours instead of 5 to get there). We stayed at Hotel Casa di William, and met our friend Veeru there at about 1am. We ended up spending 3 days in Khajuraho, seeing the temples, eating at the same restaurant that had really good food and catered to mostly Indians, having a few gifts sewn up, and overall chillin and trying to stay cool (hah!). We hung out with Veeru quite a bit, and he was kind enough to take us to a real "Indian" only place to eat...which was pretty delicious. We had spicy fish, mutton, and chicken curry, finished off with the local brew.
Much to Veeru's dismay, we decided to take off to Orchha, another small town in MP outside of Jhansi that has old palaces and temples that are currently under renovation to open up and draw the crowds in the next few years I'm sure. It was a nice quite little little little little town, with these huge old palaces and cenotaphs littered around, and it was quite gorgeous. The big draw was that it was sort of untouched still, although you can see that the tourist trail will blaze through very very very soon. Garrett was a bit ill around this time, so we took it easy in the, oh, 20 hours we had there. We stayed in Hotel Sri Mahant, the one behind the Rama Mandir, which wasn't as good or as friendly as the one in front of the temple was. But it was good, a nice stroll through the village to the main part of town. And i must say, the egg curry at Ram Raja was the best i have ever eaten in my life. It was quite an enjoyable experience that I would love to have again...but i suppose i'll have to go back to have it eh? Tomatoes, onion and garlic paste, methi (fenugreek), oil, some corriander, and boiled eggs...good lord it was so tasty. Poor garrett and his toast and curd and rice.
We took the baller Shatabdi Express from Jhansi to Agra. It was an interesting ride. It was right before dinner, so we were pretty hungry from our day wandering around Orchha, so we thought we'd get some tasty food on the all inclusive AC chair train. It was a sad sad time when everyone else (going past Agra, to Delhi) got 1 liter bottles of water, and the "Agra" peeps got a little cup of water. But some chai and biscuts, and some tomato soup later, we were still hungry and Garrett was a little delirious...probably from his stomach bug. It was all very entertaining.

Agra. i'll have garrett write about that.


Delhi? Well we did get our dinner on the Agra to Delhi leg of the Shatabdi, and we got hooked up with a sweet hotel, Hotel India International Dx (Deluxe?) by Veeru (we got the special "Veeru price"), and went around the city today after a delicious breakfast consisting of South Indian food (upma for me, rava masala dosa and mango juice for the man, and dahi idly shared between us). We saw Connaught Place (baller status shopping circle), Palika Bazaar (where this guy followed Garrett all the way down to Janpath to see if he would purchase a belt), the Delhi Tourism office, then off to Swaminaryan Akshardham (which i feel bad about seeing cause apparently i supported the dislocation of hundreds of destitute people, how the hell am i supposed to know that? guilt guilt guilt, as it also uses up tons of electricity, and is too subjective in it's information about Indian history and Indian Nationalism), and to Dilli Haat, a crafts-cum-shopping center with some pretty good food to pick up some souvenirs and eat. We ran into Durba, the bride (and half the reason we came to India...the other half being Jeremy i guess). Super random running into her, in Delhi, amidst what, any of the 13.7 million people we could have run into during our visit here? I guess it's fate!
Tomorrow we wake up early for a morning tour of the city via the Delhi Tourism Corp. for us lazy souls, then we'll wander over to the Old City in search of fried chicken, recommended to us by a friend we met on our train ride from Bhubaneswar/Puri to Hyderabad, and to see the craziness that is Chandi Chowk. Yay! Oh, also on the list of this to, um, purchase? Pressure cooker, tawa (indian griddle), another duffel bag for all of our crap, and spices galore. maybe a few cookbooks as well?

See you in Hong Kong!