Thursday
Thursday was Srinivas' wedding ceremony. I came to work dressed to go straight to the hall and people freaked because I was wearing a dress. I suppose I should do it more often. Anyway, I left the office a little after 6 as the wedding invitation stated 7:16 as the time. I found that weird, but it's based on the stars and birthdays and I went with it. Traffic was completely atrocious and it took me almost 2 hours to get there. I got there around 8:30 and found out that I had pretty much missed the entire thing. I went up to Srinivas and his wife Kalpana and said my greeting and congrats and such. Baki and Vijay popped out of nowhere and joined me (thank goodness since I wouldn't know what to do otherwise). People stared and randomly came up to me to take a picture. Then Baki and Vijay ate dinner, I tried some ice cream (still wasn't feeling 100% after last Saturday) and we trucked back home.
Re: the time on the invitations - so I guess the whole ceremony starts like 2 hours before, and they do pooja and lots of ceremonial stuff, and at 7:16 they start the official process of getting married. It's like saying "come see X & Y say "I do" at 3:47" in the U.S. (but of course we want you to be there for the whole thing, so we just say come at 3).
Friday
Friday was my birthday so I decided to not work and instead putz around the hotel and then go to the spa, and then get ready for the reception for Srinivas since the whole office was coming.
Sana took me to lunch and we had tasty pizza and these things called Snappers which is apple juice, cranberry juice and ginger ale - not bad! I went to the Nirva spa at the Ellaa and had some issues with the services I wanted/got. First, they don't do hand mendhi, even though they said they did on the phone. Hmph. Second, they couldn't do "anything" with my hair except blow dry it straight, when I wanted to have it a bit fancy for the reception. What they could do was tell me that I had a lot of split ends and that I needed a haircut. Right.
So I ended up only getting a mani/pedi which really wasn't soothing and spa-like at all. Maybe the Nirva is nice in Indian standards, but holy hell, if I got this service in the U.S. I'd flip. My nails are already chipped and it's only been like 3 days. Booo.
So it took me almost 2 hours to get the mani/pedi (when my girls in Niles can do both in less than an hour - LOVE EFFICIENCY) and I was a bit late in getting my stuff together for the reception. I grabbed all my stuff, and got ready at the office.
So the group also got me a cake for my birthday, which was very nice of them! This part wasn't so nice:
I still don't get the cake smearing thing, but supposedly it's obligatory...whatev. :P
So after cake and birthday wishes ("Many happy returns on your day") we headed out for Srinivas' reception. It was fun - we ate, chatted and finally danced after I started grumbling that I can't go to a reception without dancing. :P We left around 11 so that people could get home, and I went back to try and pack for the Delhi/Agra trip.
Saturday
We had a 6am flight, which meant we needed to leave a little after 4 am. After a quick nap, we headed out (me, Sana, Maura from Minneapolis and this guy John from the UK who works for UBS). We are on our way, on a new road to the airport, and something (of course) is wrong with the car. I don't have the pic yet, but the front tire somehow got flat along the way, but the driver tried to keep going to try and make it to the airport. At a certain point, there was a speed hump to get onto the main road, and he couldn't jump it. We had torn the rubber off the wheel and were pretty much driving on the steel where the tire once was. After sitting on the side of the road for about 15 minutes, counting the seconds we had available to still get on the flight, we got to the airport at about 5:40. We run to the check-in and find that Sana booked the wrong date and couldn't get on. Me, Maura and John all look at each other and say - um, I dunno? We figured out that we were still going to try and make the flight, and that Sana would try all the other airlines to get in soon after us. We run through security, down the hall to the gate like madmen, and make our flight with 4 minutes to spare. We land in Delhi and find that Sana was able to make it on a flight about 30 minutes after us, so we waited and were finally off to Agra.
Agra is about 4.5 hours away from Delhi by car, so we wasted no time in trying to get there. Our driver Dara was good and we mostly slept on the way there. We stopped at a tourist trap for lunch (which is fine with me - I'd rather eat where everyone else is) and sped towards Agra.
We visited some spots before the Taj, but really wanted to get to the Taj ASAP as it was closing at sunset. We made it, and it was simply SPECTACULAR. I had a great time seeing the Taj and learning about all the history of it, and just gazing at all the workmanship that went into building it. This is also where the "random men asking me for photos" thing started. First, two Iranian guys wanted pics with us "holding" the Taj (ala below) and later in the day, a bunch of Indian guys wanted a pic of me. It was really awkward, and I'm probably on a weird fetish/porn site somewhere. :P
After Taj we did some shopping, I bought a black star gemstone ring (I dig it) and then we had some grub. Our hotel was OK (hey, at this point, a bed and hot water were all that we needed) and then went to sleep.
At about 2am, we hear the fire alarm going off. Sana is dead to the world, while Maura and I are freaking out. I grab my hoody and camera bag and run for the door screaming like a banshee and Maura's right behind me but still trying to get Sana to wake up. It smelled like someone burned a toaster or something, but the hotel was like "Oh, no- it's cool, someone was just smoking". RIGHT. So we go back to bed still a bit freaked out. Sana has no recollection of any of this. Thank goodness there wasn't a real fire!!
Sunday
Sunday we drove back to Delhi and along the way, our driver Dara tried to disguise smoking breaks as random times to take pics of stuff. We went into a random temple that wasn't Muslim, Hindu or Christian (I think it was a Temple to a yogi or something) and we took another stop to get a few snaps of a statue of Shiva.
We got into Delhi and saw the Baha'i Lotus Temple, India Gate, North and South Block (political houses), the home of the President of India and Parliament (all in New Delhi). We took lunch, and headed out for the Red Fort (in Old Delhi), one of the last spots on the trip.
So Delhi is divided into two areas: New Delhi and Old Delhi. New Delhi was built by the Brits, and Old Delhi was built before by the former Muslim inhabitants of the city. New Delhi has nice wide roads, and is relatively (you guessed it) "new". Then, you pretty much cross a main road and are sucked into a crowd of like 20,000 people hawing their wares on the side of the road. It was the first time in India that I was scared for my life. Previous bombings happened in Old Delhi, and I wasn't about to make it on the 6 o'clock news. But when you are stuck in traffic, you are pretty much a sitting duck, so I tried to make the best of it but it was nerve wrecking.
We trek out into the crowd in order to cross the road to get to the Red Fort. We pass by "Pee Alley" since no one seems to have any problems peeing on the sidewalk here (and they aren't even DRUNK!) and check out the fort. It's pretty and historical and such, and I'm asked again for more snaps with random Indian guys (man, I hope I'm not somehow married now). Sana and Maura did a little more shopping and we were out of there.
Our last stop was a cute little tea shop (Xmas presents! For me! :p ) and then we were off to the airport. Our flight was delayed, but we made it back to Hyd safe and sound. On the way to the hotel, we saw an accident and our driver said "Don't look!" so I closed my eyes. Maura didn't and I don't know what she saw, but it must have been horrible. I just hope it wasn't a family on a bike that got hit. We got to the hotel around 12:30am and I think I fell asleep on the elevator up to my room. It was a really tiring experience, but definitely worth it to see the Taj.
So now I'm trying to catch up on work, come to terms with the fact that I have less than two weeks to go, and figure out where I'm gonna go from here.....
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