Delhi and onto Agra

Good morning from Delhi! After our one hour nap yesterday morning we dragged ourselves to the airport for our 6:35 a.m. flight to Delhi.....which took off at oh, about 8:45. If nothing else, this trip will teach us both to maybe be a little less hung up on time! In the interim we hung out in the airport and people watched. Needless to say, we were watched a lot too. Once we got underway, all was well and we arrived in Delhi only a few hours behind schedule. And it was immediately apparent how different Delhi is from Chennai! First of all, it is stiflingly humid here right now, since it is monsoon season up north. And it is GREEN. There are trees and grass everywhere! I am sure that there is greenery in Chennai as well, but we never encountered any on our mad dash around the city. We are staying in New Delhi, which was laid out by the British in the early 20th century and it looks, well, like a british city in India. Big boulevards, public gardens, the whole nine yards. It is really quite beautiful.
We also learned on the way from the airport that the driving here is a little less frenetic than in Chennai. That may be due to the wider streets, but it was quite relaxing. There are still some amazing sights on the road however, like this classic one, taken on the highway:

So after a brief nap/passing out cold on the bed due to exhaustion, we headed out with our driver and a very helpful tour guide for an afternoon of sightseeing. We started with going to the house where Ghandi was living at the time of his death (and where he was assasinated). It was a humongeous villa that a very wealthy man was letting him stay in. Other than the humidity factor it was really amazing.

From there, we headed on to this 14th century (I think) tower that was built as a part of a mosque. The mosque was built from stones and columns removed from 27 older hindi temples that had been torn down for their materials. The face of the hindi gods were scraped off and the plain stones were carved into intricate patterns. It was really cool. It is also interesting that the (mostly hindi) people don't seem to mind the provenance of the structure; they just love it for its place in Indian history and for how beautiful it is. The tower is something like 7 stories high and is made of red, plain, and black sandstone. It was pretty amazing.

Somewhere in there, we also saw a couple of monkeys crossing the street at a leisurly pace. One with a baby on its side (away from the camera). Yeah, we have that in the U.S., right???

After some heavy shopping we headed off for a much needed dinner at a great tandoori place where we sucked down lamb and chicken, naan and my old favorite eggplant dish, all while trying to decipher what was going in the cricket game that was on t.v. We really need to look up cricket on wilkipedia!
Today, we are heading off to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. This would be about a 90 minute trip if I were driving it in California, but no one drives very fast here so we are going to settle in for a leisurely (we hope) 4.5 hour trek. Stay tuned!