Photo dump

Drum tower at the sumo stadium.



















Qutb Minar temple complex.




















Delhi street scene. The contrast in Delhi between the stately elegance of the Mughal architecture and the filthy chaos that surrounds it is quite striking.




















Worker build scaffolds to repair Amber Fort at Jaipur by hand. The fort is an endless maze of rooms and corridors which we got rather pleasantly lost in.















View from the fort.

Delhi

I've arrived in Delhi. There was a bit of a hassle with my flight have two stopovers in China, and me not having a visa to enter that country. After a lot of handwaving and totally ineffectual explanations of the difference between Dalian and Delhi I did finally get in. I think my favorite moment was when I asked the baggage department whether my bags had be deshipped for Beijing "Your bags are in Delhi sir, please proceed to the Delhi airport and collect them." Anyway, I got here, spent a not-so awful night in the modernized Indira Gandhi airport and finally met back up with Sharada, and her friend Peter who will be acting as a sort of guide given he's been in country for 3 months already.
Yesterday we realized that Republic Day, when the full might of the Indian armed forces is marched through the streets is on the 26th, the upshot of which is that almost all of the tourist attractions are closed until then. So we'll be pushing on to Jaipur early tomorrow.
Delhi is not quite total chaos and the smog is not too much worse than Beijing before the games. The traffic is absolutely insane, it pulses rather than flows as rickshaws, bicycles, pedestrians, dogs, cows, oxcarts, busses and cars all fight for the same two lanes of roadspace. The beggars and touts are not as bad as I had expected from Slumdog Millionaire and are probably fewer and better dressed than in Tangier. Not that I'm about to move here, but I'm having the same, "I have to get away from these people reaction." Actually they are very friendly and keep asking me my name. They are disappointed when it's not as cool as Sharada, which is reckoned a very good name here. After that the shared vocabulary falters, but the intention is there. We may be reworking the itinerary for the rest of the trip today, or we may not, we'll see.

Moshi!

As we were walking along the street Sunday on our way to see the madness that is Harajuku, we encounter the area of street blocked off not 2 blocks from the hostel. Kids were running around and people were eating some kind of unrecognizable food. In the center was a large wooden tub full of a very thick white paste that they were pounding repeatedly with a giant wooden mallet. Occasionally they would add a little hot water and just keep pounding. We stopped to watch and a women can up and insisted we each take a plate of the food. It was a sugary, gluey rice paste reminscent of Diem Sum buns served with bean paste, soy flour and sea weed. It was pretty delicious considering we hadnt had any breakfast. After we finished we thanked them and began to leave. Another woman caught me and asked would I please help

the Moshi(she actually spoke very good English), and soon enough I had the giant mallet in my hands and was pounding away while everyone chanted Moshi! Moshi!. Sharada got a chance too. She has the pictures of that part, Im sure she will post them later. Later we made it Shibuya Harajuku and the Meiji shrine. We started celebrating Sharadas birthday early and just now finished, more on that later. Mom, here is the Gosori Girl picture you requested. On sunday they just stand around on the bridge and wait for tourists to photograph them and smoke.

Tokyo

First stop Tokyo. It's been really cool so far. Tokyo is sort of everything to one people. We walked through about 6 totally distinct neighborhoods and as many shrines again. Probably the best part was the Tokyo drum museum. The have a collection of 1000 drums from around the world. I'm not sure how many of them are replicas, but they look pretty authentic. The awesome part is that you are allowed to play about 25% of them yourself. Add the fact that Sharada and I had the place to ourselves, and you have a blast. Totally goes against the stewardship that most American museum have in place for their artifacts by allowing people to wail on them, but it recognizes the fact that, what good is a drum 100 years from now if no one plays it in the meantime?

There's a lot less English than I had anticipated, but just enough to get around. We had a fabulous dinner last night and our waitress spoke reasonable english, but seemed incredibly nervous about every word even though she never really made a misstep. I think maybe this is a widespread feeling and people who can speak don't out of embarassment. I know that's how I feel about my 5 words of Japanese. Today we're going to take a stroll through the posh and fashionable neighborhoods on the other side of town where the teenagers vie to put American youths' outrageous fashion sense to shame. I may have to convert to this "Gothic Lolita" mode of dress.

Around the World 2.63 times in 277 days.

My plans are fairly unorthodox so I'll take a moment to explain how this situation developed.
About a year ago I was thinking about quitting my job and traveling around the world for about a year. A friend of mine, Sharada, was having similar ideas and so we formulated a plan of sorts. When the time came to begin quitting my job, my boss, who is also a good friend/adopted father had other ideas. Whatever reasons I offered to justify my leaving, he offered a solution. The ultimate upshot is that I signed on to work alternate months(more or less). This limits the amount of traveling I can do in 2009 but I'll finish the year with money in the bank, and a job, meaning I can travel in future years as well. Sweet deal right? Sorry to say we are not hiring.

The one hitch being that Sharada was already pretty well set on completing the original 10-month long circumnavigation. So I will be joining her for roughly five non-sequential months during the her trip. This means that rather than taking the relatively short flights between her destinations, I will be flying between half of these destinations and the U.S. for a grand total of rougly 65,379 air miles, which I reckon to be 2.63 times around the world(although I will technically complete only one actual circumnavigation).

The basic itineray is as follows:

1.Japan, India Nepal 1/15-3/15. MAP/ITINERARY
Work(2 months)
2.South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi 5/15-6/15 MAP/ITINERARY
Work(1 month)
3.Egypt, Jordan 7/15-8/15 MAP/ITINERARY
Work(1 month)
4.Peru 9/15-10/15 MAP/ITINERARY

If you're curious where Sharada will be while I'm home, you can check out her blog.