Arrival

We arrive in Deli at three in the morning. Although we are exhausted it is actually a good time to arrive to miss a lot of traffic, noise and pollution. The airport is modern , efficient and attractive, decorated with large mudras (hand position) sculptures. Even at this time the air reminds us of a bad smog day in Los Angeles, what will it be like in the next few days as countless vehicles take up their daily burden? We arrive in Delhi and it is closed. Literally. We did not know that we would be arriving on Republic Day, the equivalent to our 4th of July. The shops and a lot of services are closed. How convenient as we need a slow  day to recover from the 24+ hours of travel. A couple hours of sleep and
we get up for breakfast and try to adjust to the time change. We meet Shanti and Jivat and more of our group who arrive a few hours after us. We wander over to an ATM to gather some local currency, look at the mostly closed shops in the nearby mall and return for a nap. Instead Adventure Girl Susan arranges for a car to drive us around the city. It is a good low traffic opportunity. While we expected a lot of poverty, slums and beggars which we did find, we are surprised at the opposite--wealth, cars, houses, new large business and apartment buildings, and a large modern metro system. Cows and pigs roam the streets with new BMWs cruising by. The people are helpful. We try to figure out things like tipping, exchange rates, bartering, nearby shopping opportunities. Everyone is helpful. Already we have a couple medical incidents. Henry had a difficult flight and while he is recovering Sybil has some digestive distress and will be resting up, hoping to be back to full energy tomorrow. Even though we had clean airline and hotel food, the difficulties of jet lag and not being as young as we think we are have taken there toll.