Day Eight - The Last

Last day in Delhi today and I have to say that this was actually one of my favourite trips/experiences of all time; I'd hate to get all sentimental on the crowd but it was truly incredible seeing Delhi. Words cannot describe the fun I've had over here and I am so sad to leave. All good things must come to an end (including Aditi's side notes as I'm writing this one while she's asleep). Also, do excuse any bad grammar/spelling, my proof-reader is currently snoring.

We'd planned to see Chandni Chowk and Red Fort today, along with the Jama Masjid (I swear every time someone named this place they said "jam and mustard"). We ended up only doing one of those things - and three guesses which one it was.


 Chandni Chowk is an area of town in Old Delhi which is basically just this huge market which most people associate with food (as you assumed this is the one we ended up doing). Before we left we googled and narrowed down the list of places to see in Chandni Chowk and we ended up with 3 major ones: Gali Paranthe Wali, Ghanteewala and Karim's. We ended up seeing all three, which considering our track record was pretty good.

Some of the choices we had for the paranthe, we really
wanted to try the raddis and kauliflower ones.

Gali Paranthe Wali is a street (gali meaning street) which has about a billion paranthe restaurants along it, and has in fact become a culinary destination in its own right. Paranthe is basically fried bread with filling. Aditi and I got two different paranthes: banana and mixed veg, and shared them. They were so good! We were both a little bit apprehensive about trying to food because it was essentially street food but all was well. The banana paranthe was sweet but they still put chilli in which was a little weird but still way better than I expected it to be and the mixed veg was fairly standard.

Next was the Ghanteewala which is basically a sweets place. We bought some sweets (sorry, I can't remember the names!) and then had a fight over who would pay for them. Aditi won it only because she spoke hindi to the shopkeepers and they laughed at me; a lot of people in India seem to laugh at me.

After Ghanteewala we pottered around a bit and decided to do some shopping so we went to Pahaganj which is a cheap hippy-infested market area (really good if you're on a backpacker's budget). I continued my streak of buying random things by buying some door knobs in the shape of roses to put on my wardrobe doors and then some normal boring stuff like anklets that jingle and some nice earrings; I also bought an Indian flute, which if you know me well actually isn't as random as it seems.

At this point we realised that all we had done in the past couple of days was eat and shop so we thought we'd try to be cultural and see the Jama Musjid, which coincidently was right near Karim's (more to come on Karim's), but that was irrelevant. Jama Musjid is in the Muslim Quater of Old Delhi and is the largest mosque in India. Unfortunately, because we have awful planning skills and forgot to check prayer times on google we arrived just at the start of prayer time and when the mosque closed to visitors for the day so we didn't get a chance to see inside, which is a shame but I enjoyed the rest of the night.

Next on the list was Karim's. Being the smart and cultural people we are we ordered butter chicken and 3 plates of naan, which I ate 5 out of the 6 pieces. For those who know the story from Aditi's family about the butter chicken this was a repeat of that. For those who haven't had the pleasure of eating good butter chicken with me then let's just say that you have never seen a person my size eat this much. I have to say that although we didn't order what we ought to have ordered (some of their good muslim-style food) that was still potentially the best meal I've had since being here.

The remnants of our meal (they kept taking away plates
so imagine another 2 plates for the extra naan.

Having eaten basically a full meal we realised that we were going to Aditi's Subroto-uncle's house for dinner, so we thought it'd be a good idea to walk it off and maybe do some more shopping, however when we stood up and waddled out of Karim's we agreed that we wouldn't be able to walk far and if we did end up doing more shopping then we'd be out after dark which we, sensibly, thought would be a bad idea. The metro and Subroto-uncle's it was for us.

At Subroto-uncle's we chatted for a bit with the family, who turns out, have known Aditi's family from before Aditi or her sister were born. Food was the next logical step so we all went down to the table to eat some dinner, which was also so yummy. It was mutton curry, which was gorgeous and I ended up eating a whole plateful of it (by the way this was only 3 hours after we had been at Karim's). For desert we had ladoos, which are these Indian sweets consisting of basically sugar and flour with some nuts in them, really nice but super breakable as I found out: I squashed the ladoo too hard and it exploded everywhere. At this point more people in India started laughing at me.

Just 'cause

Subroto-uncle's son, Mihir, then took Aditi and I out to see a little bit of the area around where he lives, told us some history about the 'hip' places and how they formed right near a deer park and then we called it a night.

So, this will be my last post from the India trip which will include writing. Just want to give a huge thank-you to everyone who let me stay at their place/fed me/gave Aditi and I advice and anyone else who helped us at all. You guys really made the trip enjoyable as there was always a sense of family and support in case anything went wrong; not to mention the wealth of knowledge about the areas in Delhi and what to do. I got almost everything done that I wanted to do, the only thing I can think of that I didn't get a chance to do that was important was the elephant ride. I really want to ride an elephant or at least see a live one, alas it was not meant for this trip. I guess that just means I'll have to come back! I throughly recommend Delhi and India in general to anyone and everyone; it's a great place with some great people. I even got my photo taken with an entire family today for no apparent reason (this happened while in line to wash my hands at Karim's).

The next post will just be one full of pictures and videos that Aditi and I took on the trip including ones that I didn't get a chance to include in the blog because I didn't have space or just random things that I saw that made me giggle. I'd best be off because I have a flight to catch in the morning.

Day Seven

Contrary to yesterday, today we started with a late morning. After taking a while to organise what we were gonna do today, we decided to have a picnic; not exactly cultural but still lots of fun. We decided that we needed picnic food so I had a cultural experience and took a cycle rickshaw; we only went about 500m but it was still an experience. After buying 1000INR worth of food, we squeezed 4 people into an auto, which was actually more comfortable than expected.

When we finally got to Lodhi gardens the first thing that hit me about this particular park was the odd mix of old crumbling tombs/temples and people playing badminton. It worked, and that was the odd bit because it seemed so normal that it took me a while to notice it. Lodhi gardens are gorgeous, and to be honest, I think I experienced them in the best way possible: having a picnic and playing Taboo with a bunch of super nice people. The other thing about the gardens is that there are hawks everywhere. I don't mean little hawks; I'm talking about full grown hawks swooping down and nicking food from people, soaring on thermals, and chasing smaller birds. In all honesty the hawks made my day. They were just so beautiful and seemed to fit in. Aside from the hawks, there were also parakeets, chipmunks and dogs. It was crazy! But such a nice atmosphere because of it; so nice that we even adopted a dog for a while. (Side note from Aditi: More like she adopted us)

After seeing the Lodhi gardens we were going to go to Chandni Chowk but unfortunately a member of our group got Delhi Belly, so we called it a night to the outing part of our day. We went back to the house, got some afghani food and played Pictionary, which I have to say I'm not disappointed in. I love Pictionary and barely ever get the chance to play (plus one of Marisha's friends is just as competitive as I am) (Aditi: In fact, even MORE psycho than Laura. It was very entertaining)

We decided to have an early night because last night was so late. But tomorrow we'll be roaming around Old Delhi and the Jama Masjid area.

Day Six

We started today in darkness because we got up at 5:30 to get to the bus for our whole day Agra tour. The bus was meant to leave at 6:30; it left at 7:30. We were meant to get to Agra at 11:00; we got there at 12:30.

We paid 2300INR for both of us on this tour, and the price should have alerted us to the fact that it wouldn't be five star, but there's a difference between five star and having a reasonable bus and tour guide. The 2300INR included a abominable bus, which vibrated so much that by the end of the day Aditi had a headache and I had a tummy ache, and breakfast, which Aditi and I didn't even eat much of because it was pretty rubbish so we ended up eating chocolate biscuits.

After the pretty abysmal breakfast, we went back onto the atrocious bus for another 2 hours of death-defying driving. Most of the big vehicles on the road have words painted on their back saying things like: Honk Please; Loud Please Honk, and Please Honk Lights (Side note from Aditi: Horn OK Please TATA. Never understood that one). I always thought that this was just one of those things that people do because they don't understand the language properly and wanted to decorate their vehicles, but I found out today that this wasn't the case. After studying the trucks, I realised that most of them don't have wing mirrors, or if they do they're pointed the wrong way, so the way they get around this easily fixable problem is to use horns. If you want to over-take a truck then you hoot madly when you're behind him and then when you pull out to over-take and they'll move over; obviously this wouldn't work in the city as everyone honks for no good reason, but on the big roads between cities it's fairly efficient but very very annoying for the passengers. Excuse the lecture on driving but I found this mind blowing (Side note from Aditi: Anything can blow your mind. This is mind BLASTING, yaar!) that this system had evolved when they could easily have just fixed their mirrors (Aditi: Yes, but this is assuming people stick to traffic laws. What's the point of having wing-mirrors when all you would be able to see behind you is utter madness? Honk if you want 'em to budge over. Simple. Confusion avoided)

Akbar's Tomb

When we finally got to Agra we were graciously told that we had 10 minutes to take some pictures of the outside of Akbar's Tomb. We weren't allowed inside. At the time we didn't know what we were taking pictures of, but that wouldn't be worthy of a tour costing 1000INR, would it? Turns out Akbar's tomb is the tomb of the third Mughal Emperor and was built to mimic the city that he built.

After our wondrous ten minutes, which our group managed to extend to 20 because we wanted more photos, we hopped back onto the awful bus and drove to Agra fort. At this point we found out that, of course, the 1000INR didn't include any tickets, hence why we couldn't actually go inside Akbar's tomb. Aditi, having already seen Agra Fort before told me that it probably wasn't worth it, so we opted out and sat on the ghastly bus eating biscuits and crisps for an hour (Aditi: We so cultural, yo).

Then it was lunch; the day got much better from lunch onwards (Aditi: Because for Laura,  food cures all ails). We ate lunch at a place, which for the life of me I can't remember the name of, but it was pretty good food. Weird Indian food, but still good. Aditi and I shared our table with this adorable old Austrian woman who was the only other foreigner on our tour. She always comes to India at this time and this is about the 5th time she's visited India - the first time was 20 years ago. She travels all over the world on her pension and spends 4 weeks in Goa after she sees the rest of India. After meeting her I realised my ideal retirement plan - travelling the world with Aditi (Aditi: WOOHOO!) and seeing everything that can be seen.

 

In any case, as we walked out of the restaurant on our way back to the horrific bus, there was a snake charmer outside with a cobra and a python. Now, to be perfectly honest I have never seen a real snake before that wasn't behind a 2inch piece of glass/acrylic and in captivity, so these snakes kind of scared the bejesus out of me. Aditi, however, just decided to go and pat them. I never thought that I'd hold a python around my neck or pat a cobra's hood. I have to say it was actually pretty cool. Obviously they didn't have any fangs left and had been trained, but they were still live snakes! We paid the guy 100INR for letting both Aditi and I hold the python and pat the cobra and jumped onto the dreadful bus for the final destination on our list: the Taj Mahal.

My namesake
Image from: micronations.wikia.com

Their namesake

For those of you who didn't do year 8 history in Dubai College: the Taj Mahal is a mausoleum built by Shah Jahan (the 5th Mughal emperor) for his third wife Mumtaz Mahal. Taj Mahal is normally translated to 'Crown of Palaces' and Mumtaz Mahal to 'Chosen One of the Palace' (Aditi: Except Mumtaz totally means 'excellent' in Arabic. Phail); which in all honesty are pretty cool names considering mine is derived from a laurel wreath. The whole of the Taj is built out of white marble which was sourced from all over the world and inlaid with jade and other stones (these form the patterns). Shah Jahan wanted to build a scale version of the Taj for himself out of black marble but by this point the Taj was costing so much money and time that they refused to let him build his mausoleum separately. Now Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal lie side by side in the Taj Mahal.

When you walk in the East gate of the Taj complex you can't really see the Taj because there's the traditional huge gates that you need to walk through and they block the Taj from your line of sight. But then you walk through one of the gates and it appears. It definitely deserves to be on the seven man-made wonders list. It's almost exactly as the postcards show, but bigger. The most incredible thing about the Taj is the sheer scale. It's huge! The domes are almost perfect and it's ridiculously intricate.


One of the great things about being a 'foreigner' are the lines. You have to understand that the Taj has about 8200 visitors per day and most of them being from India, so having foreigner lines is awesome. You pay 750INR instead of 20INR but I think it's totally worth it. The police who act as the security guards actually stop the flow of people to let foreigners through. It was a pretty crazy experience considering the line of non-foreigners to get into the Taj was the length of 3 of the sides; the line had curved around the Taj. Inside the Taj, you walk into an octagonal room with two tombs inside a fence and the line pushes you to walk around the fence in a clockwise direction; this is the main room of the mausoleum. In comparison to the entire Taj, this was a pretty small room. The walls were inlaid with jade and jasper, which were flush with the marble. After you walk through the octagonal room you get to see a little bit of the rest of the Taj which is just basically big empty rooms with designs carved into the marble and the stones inlaid.

Because of the delays, we only got to see the Taj in sunlight for about half an hour, and then the sun set. Unfortunately, it wasn't a full moon so we couldn't see the Taj in all its glory. If you do ever go to the Taj then try to go on a night of a full moon, and go towards the end of the night. Because of the white marble, when there's a full moon, and hopefully not too much dust and smog in the air, the Taj  glistens and glows in the moonlight.

We left the Taj, went shopping in the semi-official Taj shop down the road and then got back onto the bus from Hades. After a 4 hour bus ride, where our bones were shaken into an inch of their lives, we finally got back to the apartment and went to sleep (Aditi: Total lie. We had showers, had a minor wrestling match, I managed to mess up Maggi-noodles, watched pointless youtube videos, wasted time. Yep)

Tomorrow, we'll be doing a crazy food walk! (Aditi: CRAY CRAAAAAAY)

Day Five

BAM!

Today began with an hours sleep-in; we then decided that it'd be a good idea to get out of the house and absorb some culture. So, we joined Aditi's Subroto-Uncle and a UNESCO official in a guided tour of Humayan's Tomb and the surrounding complex. The tomb was gorgeous. The tour was fairly short because, to be honest, aside from the stunning architecture there's not much else around due to the fact that most of the main building is still under restoration. You walk past the ticket counter and there's a wall which has a 3m section of it knocked down and a path through the hole, and at this point you're half considering the fact that you might have come to the wrong place, but alas, a little way down a path and under a giant arch-come-building and BAM! There's Humayan's Tomb just sitting there with these gardens surrounding it. The building itself is huge - it covers 2 acres and that's not including the gardens.

Octagonal tomb in background

There is also a second tomb which we were allowed to see because we had an UNESCO official and a tour guide, who turns out to be one of the main guys working on the restoration of the Tomb, which in my opinion was better than Humayan's because it was more delicate. We walked through a wooden door and it looked like we'd walked onto a movie set; it was almost exactly what I would define as idyllic. The tomb was sitting 4 feet above a sunken garden with lush green grass and new trees just growing. Most of the tile work was gone/vandalised so all that really remained of the artwork of the building were the sculptured columns and arches.

After the interesting tour (during which Aditi and I were more entertained by the squirrels and the architecture than any of the facts and culture) we were given a driving tour of India Gate and Rashtrapati Bawan (Indian version of the White House). India Gate was awesome, it's a 42m tall archway which is a monument to the fallen Indian soldiers from WWI. Aside from the sheer scale of it and the emotional background, there's not much going on. To be honest, a good drive around the round-about surrounding it  is just as good. If you have a lot of time then I reckon it'd be a good place to picnic but unfortunately we didn't have time as we weren't completely in control of our plans at this point.


The car drove on until we reached what used to be called King's Way, which is basically this long road leading from India Gate to Rashtrapati Bawan. Either side of the road were grand buildings which were government offices and ministries. The main building itself is quite cool and the surrounding buildings house some pretty important people e.g. the head of the Indian Navy, Indian Air-force and the Prime Minister.



After seeing Rashtrapati Bawan, we had to go straight back to Gurgaon so we could pack our bags because we were spending the next couple of nights at Marisha's (Aditi's cousin). Got back to Gurgaon, packed all our stuff (including shoving a whole table into my suitcase (Side note from Aditi: Well that was the best sentence ever)) in about 30 minutes and hopped into the waiting car.


When we finally got to Marisha's after an hour in stop-start traffic we decided that food was more important than unpacking or sleeping. So we followed her to a cute little cafe/store and had some food (Side note from Aditi: So goooood. Also, they played Barbie Girl in midst of Bollywood hits and golden oldies. This place has my approval). I'm back at Marisha's now and we're just about to go off to bed because we've got to be up at 5am tomorrow for the Agra tour.

Just want to say a big thank-you to Aditi's Brinda-chachi and grandmum for putting up with Aditi and me (Aditi: We are not easy to put up with).

Day Four - "I took a table to my wallet"

We started today with a trip to the Qutub Minar, which is the tallest minaret in India, started in 1192 and finished in 1236. That's about all I know(Side note from Aditi: And we totally read that on Wikipedia as well. So cultural.). Aside from that, the highlights of this place were the cute squirrels we randomly saw and the hordes of flying death ninjas (i.e. wasps and bees). There's this really cool pole thing where if you can put your arms around it with your back to it you will be granted a wish...except now it has a fence around it cause sweaty people were corroding it. The thing we both did notice about the Qutub Minar was the architecture; there's one thing we both appreciate about cultural places. We were going to take some pictures of us in the Qutub compound but the flying things freaked me out too much so we had to leave. (Side note from Aditi: STANDARD)


At this point it was about lunch time, so we decided to get some lunch and end the cultural part of the day. For the rest of the day we ate and shopped.
(Side note from Aditi: Although, it was shopping among some lovely, traditional things, so it was SOMEWHAT cultural!)





There's this great place called Dilli Haat, which is like a semi-official market; most of the stalls donate their profits to some sort of charity that is normally linked into their products. For example, I now have a gift bag made out of recycled paper made by a drug dealer's wife; and from the same stall I have a baby pink jute bag with Einstein's face printed on it. The atmosphere of this place is great! It seems like a proper market but cleaner, and you know that when you buy most of the stuff that the money is going to a good place, although it does make you feel a bit guilty when you try to haggle with the charity based stalls. Turns out Aditi and I should never go shopping together, we ended up buying some of the most ridiculous things: I bought a table which I plan to take back to Aus and Aditi bought a rainbow scarf a year ahead of when she'll need it and 2 completely superfluous bags. (Aditi: All awesome purchases. No regrets)

Apart from the ridiculous amount of time we dedicated to shopping, the rest of our day was spent eating momos. Not just any momos but momos from a place called Momo Mia, which I thought was hilarious. We went back to that place like we seem to do with all places that serve momos. After a very fruitful, day we decided to come home, eat dinner and watch Tere Bin Laden.

<--- Oh, and I almost bought Aditi this inflatable penguin.

Tomorrow we're off to Humayan's Tomb where we'll be crashing a UNESCO tour.

Day Three

Today we were planning to find an elephant to ride, but it turns out it's harder than we thought (Side note from Aditi: In Delhi. Only in Delhi. There are plenty of elephants elsewhere ie. Pune!) , so we scrapped the idea when we heard of a place called the Kingdom of Dreams. (For all those who have been to Dubai think of Global Village...but more legit.)

Kingdom of Dreams was
awesome! They had a whole section dedicated to food from 14 different States, it was a giant hall with a sky dome and a golden lotus entrance. They didn't have all of the states (not that I noticed this - that was all Aditi) but they had a good selection, including: Assam, Mumbai (Side note from Aditi: She means Maharashtra), Goa, Chennai, West Bengal, Kerala and 8 others, which for the life of me I can't remember the names of. They had traditional food from each place and it wasn't just the fancy traditional food, it was also the traditional street food and market foods. Each place has huge wall decorations pertaining to their state; it made for a lovely atmosphere.



Aside from the food, there were shops selling notebooks, jewellery, hanging ornaments etc from each state/area; there was even a stall where you could do pottery and get your name written in rice and then put inside various keychains. The stores were great but a little pricey considering what I've heard about the markets (Side note from Aditi: But this was a shmancy tourist place, not a market market). The food was also a little pricey (for India) but it was mainly whole meals as opposed to small tidbits to nibble on. I have to say this is TOTALLY worth seeing. If you're not a food person (Side note from Aditi: Who are you? Freaks.) then it's great for the atmosphere and the stores and the random dancers that come out every now and again. If you are a food person like Aditi and I, then this place is like a SparkNotes of India.

Left is the giant lotus that is the entrance to the food hall.

Right is me next to the sign for Mumbai, looking oh so impressed.

We ended up eating some indo-chinese, from the West Bengal restaurant, which as weird as it sounds was SO good but was also crazy hot; I could only eat a couple of pieces of chicken and then my mouth was on fire (and I consider myself ok at handling spice). From Goa we had a Komdi Masala, which was a chicken curry thing - very nice, not so spicy and they served with with lime that you could drizzle over which made it an incredible dish (Side note from Aditi: Laura totally got high on lime. It was strange) . We went back to this one restaurant twice because the food was just that good: Assam. They had these things called Momos (Side note from Aditi: MOMOS <3 ), which are kind of like dim sum but better- we ended up running back into the giant lotus hall to get more.

Aside from the food and stores there was also an upper floor, which housed things such as Tarot, palm reading and Numerology booth, as well as a massage parlour. We booked a show for 8pm so when 7pm came around we didn't have much to do as we'd been eating for 3 hours straight and didn't really want to spend too much more money. So we decided to get ourselves a massage to pass the time.

After the massage we just sort of ambled around until we could go into the theatre (Side note from Aditi: By this she means, we choreographed the macarena in time to Everybody Talks and ran to the security guards like birds). The general area around the lotus hall was also decorated and designed as a sort of tourist thing. There were: giant elephants; big gates with golden designs; a 100 foot long sleeping Buddha on the wall, and a couple of other spectacular things. (Side note from Aditi: Laura TOTALLY said 'na?' completely subconsciously and in context. It was awesome.)
















8 o'clock came around and we went into the theatre only to be greeted by thrones, velvet lined walls and the such; the whole place was done up to look like a palace or a royal residence. We couldn't resist the thrones.

The show we went to see was called 'Zangoora: The Gypsy Prince' and was basically what it's title suggests: a love story of a gypsy who is actually a prince but doesn't know it who falls in love with a princess who actually isn't. It claims to be the first Bollywood Broadway show and I can see why. There were people on strings pretending to be swimming through the ocean; there was the evil king who laughed manically at every chance he got (Side note from Aditi: This was an alarmingly good evil laugh. I feel like he must have been to evil laugh school or something); there were elaborate costumes; crazy dance numbers, and some very badly lip-synched singing. But all in all, it was awesome and definitely an experience. I do suggest if you ever go to the Kingdom of Dreams and see Zangoora that you get the headset that translate it into English. I watched the first half without it and I got the drift of it but was thoroughly lost on reasons for stuff happening. The headsets aren't great, because it's either pre-recorded or whoever is translating doesn't know anything about timing or just can't see the stage. I was often a whole segment ahead of the actors or behind them by a couple of lines, or in a couple of cases the lines actually weren't translated at all. Apart from the sketchy translations it was worth it. (Side note from Aditi: During the curtain-call, the dancers came out to the audience and one of them got Laura and I to start dancing with him. At first I thought it was just because we were clearly top audience members, but alas, they did it with a bunch of people. Still thoroughly enjoyable, though! Except he looked like he was dancing and we looked like we were spazzing. Standard.)

I'm off - we're going market shopping tomorrow!

Day Two - Diwali!

So today is Diwali, which is the festival of lights. All the Hindu festivals/holidays have long and gorgeous back-stories behind them, and I thought I’d find out about Diwali’s and share it. Diwali comes from the story of Raam and his wife Sita. Raam is the eldest son of the eldest wife of the King of Iayodhya. When the King grew sick, he wanted to hand over control of the kingdom to Raam (as he was the eldest); however, Kekai (the King’s second wife) realised that the King would hand power over to Raam not her son. She asked the King to banish Raam and his wife to the forest for 14 years. The King had to comply because he was in Kekai’s debt. The King talked to Raam about it and Raam told his father to keep his promise and that he’d be ok in the forest with Sita. When Kekai told her son the good news, that he would become the crown prince, he rebelled and was very angry with her. He said that he would not rule in his own name but only in the name of Raam. The king of Lanka (now Sri Lanka) , Ravan, kidnapped Sita when Raam was out hunting for food. Raam raised a great army to get Sita back from Ravan. The day that Ravan was killed and Sita was saved is 20 days before Diwali, which is Desharah, the festival of the triumph of good over evil. On Diwali, the tealights are lit to signify the lights lit for Raam and Sita so they could find their way back to Iayodha.

The great thing about Hinduism that I'm noticing is that it's so open and welcoming to outsiders and they love to explain where the holidays and traditions come from. (Side note from Aditi: YEAAAAHHHH. But I am totally unreligious.)

This morning we went to 'DT MegaMall' (not so mega to be honest) to get some mendhi done. To get there we took an auto-rickshaw, which in all honestly was slightly terrifying. Sometimes the roads have lanes and sometimes they don't - not that that matters to the drivers. The auto, as it is known locally, was over-taking cars and turning corners like it was in a race. When the driver needed to turn a corner, he just simply drove out into the middle of the road and expected others to stop and move out of the way. It was an experience to say the least. Back to the mendhi. Mendhi is the Indian henna that is traditionally done for weddings. The women attending the wedding will often get mendhi on their hands and the bride will have it on her hands and feet, often all the way up her arms to the elbow. The mendhi cost us 600INR each which is about $10. These are the designs we got.

After we sat on tiny stools for about 45 minutes  to get our mendhi done, we had the pooja. We went back to where we were staying, got changed into our nice clothes, and the pooja began. Now, I have only ever experienced one pooja before this so I was a little anxious, because the other pooja I had been to was in honour of a group of people (me included) who helped the community to paint their school - it was a bit lengthy to put it lightly. But I put my inhibitions aside and sat down. Completely different from the previous pooja; this one involved CDs being swapped and YouTube being used to find the right prayer (in song form). We listened to 4 different prayers and the older ones sang along to it from a prayer book while I only managed to get the repeated lines that formed a sort of chorus in each prayer. In between prayers we were given some rice and spice mixture (tika) onto our foreheads to activate our thrid eyes (chakras); some prasad to drink which is an offering, always first offered to god, (unfortunately I haven't mastered the art of drinking from my hands so it went all over my lengha, which no one saw to my relief) (side note from Aditi: LOL FAIL AT LIFE); and some rice and a sugar block as an offering - this particular offering is only on Diwali (the rice tasted like popcorn which was a little strange in the circumstances). We were also given a blessing in the form of a string bracelet tied onto our wrists: left wrist for married/widowed women and right wrist for men and unmarried women (side note from Aditi: Because they're the SAME THING). Then there was a minute silence in which everyone said their prayers and that was the end of the pooja. (Side note from Aditi: except I may possibly have forgotten to pray... oops.)

After the pooja came the fireworks! Which, having lived in Dubai and gone to numerous Diwali parties, I am very familiar with; however I was not prepared for this Diwali's. The kids were running wild with 8 year-olds holding flames and lighting fireworks, which looked like erupting volcanoes of sparks. The adults were using empty wine bottles to set off the rockets which flew into the air...assuming they were pointed in the right direction, which didn't happen as often as I'd have liked. All in all, it was basically mayhem, which isn't always a bad thing.

We then came back to the apartment to have dinner. And called it a night. (Side note from Aditi: A NIGHT. See what I did there? Hahahahaha)