Travel seems fraught with anxiety these days. The taxi forgot to pick us up, we had a short connection in Frankfurt with long lines for Immigration and Security and a sprint for our connecting flight, and we were not sure the luggage made the flights, but finally everything worked out exactly as it was supposed to . . . and our guide was waiting for us at 1:00 a.m. in Delhi! 
Everybody is so gracious here. Two large planes landed at midnight, but every single passenger was given a rose, and our guide had more flowers and gifts for us. Every passenger was screened for swine flu by a nurse before we even got to Immigration. Exiting the luggage area, there must have been 75-100 guides waiting patiently with name cards for specific passengers, even at that late/early hour.
The time difference is 9.5 hours (yes, a half time zone), so at 2:30 a.m. it felt like 5:00 in the afternoon, and I was wide awake even after 22 hours of travel. So, a few hours' sleep, some breakfast, and we're ready to explore! We'll collapse early tonight!We're 24 hours into an intense indoctrination in India! It is intense! And there's a LOT to learn!
Delhi is big! And old! We spent this morning in Old Delhi, the ancient Muslim capital, where very old and very new coexist, side-by-side. New modern buildings and lots of renovations for the Commonwealth Games in 2010; and temples and mosques and forts that have been around for 500 years. Lots of traffic, few cabs but thousands of small “auto-rickshaws,” people clinging to buses in ways that completely violate the laws of physics (there's no way the 4th guy outside the door can possibly stay on). Crazy compared to home, but we're becoming used to traffic in Asia, and this no longer seems so unusual.
Delhi has been continuously occupied for more than 6,000 years, 9 different times the capital of India, has changed hands dozens of times. We visited the Red Fort, a UNESCO World Heritage site built more than 500 years ago during the height of the Moghul empire. Built of sandstone and marble, it has been ransacked and overrun various times, but the Persians stripped it of precious stones and sandalwood and artifacts and carried them back to Persia, where many of them sit in Iranian museums today. The fort is being restored, but it is presently in serious disrepair.
From there we took a bicycle rickshaw ride through the Chandi Chowk Bazaar, Old Delhi's amazing shopping area. It's different and smaller than Bangkok's Chatuchak market (which has more than 15,000 shops), but may be even more intense. Everybody wants tourists' dollars, including the guy who gestured to me with a small round container, which he opened to reveal a 3-foot cobra (about 9 inches from my arm). He was offering, for a few rupees, to make the snake dance.
They provided polka-dotted cover-ups for Westerners because our clothing (even with long pants and long-sleeved tops) does not cover us up as much as is preferred. We noticed that we were getting serious scowls from the men in the entrance. Afterwards, our guide told us is was because Fran looks very Iranian and the men were expressing disapproval for not wearing traditional garb!
Later we drove past the new Lotus Temple, and the sites where Mahatma Ghandi, then later his daughter Indira (then Prime Minister), and later Mohandas Ghandi, her son, were cremated. These (adjacent) sites are now Hindu holy places.In the afternoon we visited the new Akshardham Temple, which is staggering. Completed less than 4 years ago, almost entirely of marble and sandstone, but with extraordinary carvings, it covers 100 acres and is one of the largest places of worship ever constructed on the planet. Where did they find enough skilled craftsmen, Hindu or otherwise, to provide 300 million stone carving hours, in the 21st century??
Religion still drives lots of human behavior. Hindus and Muslims seem to coexist in an uneasy alliance. (India is 88% Hindu; Pakistan is 99% Muslim. And they don't always agree on everything.) Security is a priority everywhere. At the Red Fort, there is a bunker, surrounded with sand bags and manned by a soldier with a machine gun, about every 25 yards. At the temples and mosques every person is individually patted down. We saw hundreds of soldiers armed with automatic weapons at points throughout the city. Our driver was stopped and questioned (a previous bomber impersonated a tourist guide), although I'm still certain we were stopped because the guy in the back has blue eyes! A typical modern-day terrorist for sure!!We're enjoying the food, but we still have lots to learn about spices and tastes! As long as we stay with medium seasonings, we're doing fine.
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