Travelling and Delhi

Allow me to preface this with the fact that I am currently sitting on a king size bed, eating two delicious chocolate cookies that really taste like brownies. Now, onto more substantive matters—

My journey:

Dayton to Chicago (simple, unexciting)

Chicago to Delhi: After chilling in O’Hare next to a leaky ceiling, I boarded the plane. I ended up in a window seat, so I spent much time gazing lovingly out the window. We went around Greenland, so through Canada I got to see uninhabited wilderness, and in Greenland, looked at the snow-covered (perhaps cloud covered?) mountains. By the time we had gotten to Delhi, I was about halfway through Anna Karenina, somewhat dehydrated, well-fed, and tired.

Luckily, though, I found my very nice fancy taxi person, and he took me back to this incredible hotel (allow me to note that Mom booked this because she was worried about my safety). On the way back, I discovered some fun (and not-so-fun) facts: (1) there are an incredible number of slums around the airport, built mostly from abandoned metal and wood, (2) people sell food not only on the side of the street, but also in the street, (3) Indians don’t buy American cars.

Regardless, this hotel, the Leela Kempinski, has more services than I could or would ever want to use, although I have found the fitness center. For those of you interested, a couple of fun facts: (1) yes, all weights and distances are metric (this made it very confusing when I was bench pressing), (2) they are really into the whole slow movement with weights deal. However, even though they had different equipment, I found an elliptical that practically had my name on it. Fortunately, even the music fit my exercising groove, meaning that they played at least two songs from MTV Party to Go Vol. 10. I was so excited that I hardly paid attention to all of the cricket news on BBC WorldService!

Finally, I thought that I’d quickly comment on Indian hospitality. Thus far, everyone except for the immigration agent has been exceedingly nice to me, and for that I am grateful. I was also welcomed as I walked through a metal detector and had all of my bags x-rayed.