New Dehli - Hot, Hot, Hot

I'm currently in Agra, India. Today we went to see the Taj Mahal. It was worth all the hype it gets. It was incredible, beautiful and massive. Can't say much more without becoming too trite. We also went to this palace ghosttown built by Akbar (the grandfather of the guy who built the Taj). Not going to get into Mughal history, but it was pretty sweet, particularly the mosque right next to it. Akbar built this giant capital out in the desert, 20 miles from Agra, the previous capital. Unfortunately, it had no water, so they abandonned it when he died.

I said desert. New Dehli and Agra are both in the corner of India where the desert meets the Himilayas. That means its basically a desert climate. The streets of Dehli are dusty from the sand blown in from the desert, and they are hot. The themometer reached 115 in Delhi yesterday, and today, when we were tramping through the abandonned desert palace it got up to 118, I think. Hot. In Delhi, its even worse because the smog is horrible, think downtown LA in the 1980's. This is tough to deal with when you are riding on the back of a motorbike.

By the way, I'm not sure if many of you know why I went to India. An old friend of mine just finished studying in India. So he has been taking me around on the back of his motorbike in true Delhi fashion. This has really thrown me into the heart of the Delhi experience. Driving is crazy here. There are no rules. When there is traffic, we squeeze onto the unpaved sidewalks and go around it. They turn the red lights out after a certain time of night to save energy, not that that makes a difference since no one obeys them anyways. If they do obey them, there is apparently a 3 second rule. You can keep going three seconds after you get a red light and three seconds before you get a green light. This should cause collision, but in Dehli, it just kind of meshs so that you maybe try to avoid hitting anyone who gets in your way.

Its intense. Everything about India could be described as intense. The people are everywhere, in your face, and, to a certain degree, most are trying to trick me. I've seen some cool things, but so far I have a fairly negative impression of India. They think they are all that and a bag of chips, but its really kind of a craphole, worse than I've seen anywhere else. 5 star hotels next to slums is a common occurence. And these slums are horrible. We saw a kid today, bathing in filth, his stomach bulging from malnutrition. Just above, rich Dehlites wandered around this ancient desert palace for the day, sitting in air conditioned Landrovers.

There's more I could say, but we're running out of time. We'll be going to the most sacred site in Hinduism tonight by night train.