A hearty hello to all our friends back home! We've made it to Bangalore incident free and begin our rotation in 2 days...
First a little bit of filling in. We spent all of yesterday trekking around New Delhi, navigating the metro, and seeing more monuments and historical sites. Our day started with our always delicious free breakfast at Hotel Tara Palace, which has served us well for the past 4 days- it turns out that very few tourists stay in Old Delhi, so hooray for going a teeny bit off the beaten path!
We made our way to the closest metro stop- and were pleasantly surprised to find an extremely clean, modern, and efficient metro system that took us to pretty much anywhere we wanted to go. Between the posted maps, and 2 different tour books, we successfully found a number of great spots. Our first stop was the Qutub Minar, an old Islamic Ruin build in the 1100s- we are continuously impressed by how people are able to build these almost perfect structures with such intricate detail by hand.
Our next stop was another from the "top 10" of Delhi book (thanks, Abby!), Humyan's tomb. It was a little bit of a walk from the metro stop and required a gas station snack/water/coffee/cold beverage visit. Once arriving at the tomb, we were pretty impressed with how similar it appeared to the Taj, minus the astounding white marble. Humayan was buried here after inadvertently falling down a flight of stairs to his death...yikes! Buried with him are approximately 160 of his family members, as well as his barber. (Hopefully the barber lived a long, lovely life prior to his burial with Humyan...) While wandering around the balcony of the tomb, we noticed a number of visitors, locals and tourists alike, being SWARMED by bees, almost reminiscent of a plague of locusts. Despite visitors' efforts to make the bees dispersed, they walked out of the tomb with ~20+ bees completely surrounding them. Needless to say, it looked like something out of the X-files or the Twilight Zone. Eek. We ended our day with a harrowing tuk-tuk ride (Jill has an amazing photo of this) to Connaught Place, the center of New Delhi. What is a tuk-tuk you ask? We theorize that it is a moped, with a body placed over it (open on both sides), with a small bench in the back. It was more than a tight squeeze- we had a death grip on the tuk-tuk and each other to prevent falling out of the sides and/or getting hit by another car/moped/bike/donkey/cow/person....
Our last night in Delhi ended with dinner and a "local" (or rebottled something) at Q'bar, supposedly the 15th best bar in the world. We all felt a little underdressed but it was delicious and refreshing nonetheless.
This morning we awoke bright and early (3:15am!) to get to the airport by 4:30 for a flight to Bangalore. We arrived without a hitch and checked into the annexe III of St. John's Medical College- we each get our own room and our own bathroom. There are med students here from Sweden and England, and quite a few from all over the US. We are really looking forward to meeting some new people and seeing medicine from a few different perspectives. It was wonderful to finally unpack and try to feel a little more at home (I really wish I had some kind of poster to hang on the wall...its a little bare...)
A quick first impression of Bangalore- very modern, and seems to be much more manageable than Delhi. A little calmer (not quite the same as home, but calmer), and LOTS of western influence, and LOTS of huge companies over here...we're 5km away from 3M, and IBM and Dell are even closer.
After unpacking we propmptly realized we were responsible for our own toilet paper. We ventured out into our neighborhood and found TP, some fruit, shampoo, soap, etc. We also found a new favorite hangout, Cafe Coffee Day, which advertises free wi-fi internet. (And air conditioning!!!)...we eagerly packed up our computers and prepared for skype/facebook/photos/etc only to find the internet was down. Sigh. Currently all four of us are sitting in an outdoor internet cafe, paying 10 rupees (20 cents) per each half an hour. The monitor I am looking at appears to be older than me. Hopefully our coffee shop of choice gets its internet up and running and we'll be able to post some photos for you all...
Tomorrow....we're going to see the Hunger Games!!! Its going to be great.
Oofta, that was a novel...
Namaste Friends!
KJ
First a little bit of filling in. We spent all of yesterday trekking around New Delhi, navigating the metro, and seeing more monuments and historical sites. Our day started with our always delicious free breakfast at Hotel Tara Palace, which has served us well for the past 4 days- it turns out that very few tourists stay in Old Delhi, so hooray for going a teeny bit off the beaten path!
We made our way to the closest metro stop- and were pleasantly surprised to find an extremely clean, modern, and efficient metro system that took us to pretty much anywhere we wanted to go. Between the posted maps, and 2 different tour books, we successfully found a number of great spots. Our first stop was the Qutub Minar, an old Islamic Ruin build in the 1100s- we are continuously impressed by how people are able to build these almost perfect structures with such intricate detail by hand.
Our next stop was another from the "top 10" of Delhi book (thanks, Abby!), Humyan's tomb. It was a little bit of a walk from the metro stop and required a gas station snack/water/coffee/cold beverage visit. Once arriving at the tomb, we were pretty impressed with how similar it appeared to the Taj, minus the astounding white marble. Humayan was buried here after inadvertently falling down a flight of stairs to his death...yikes! Buried with him are approximately 160 of his family members, as well as his barber. (Hopefully the barber lived a long, lovely life prior to his burial with Humyan...) While wandering around the balcony of the tomb, we noticed a number of visitors, locals and tourists alike, being SWARMED by bees, almost reminiscent of a plague of locusts. Despite visitors' efforts to make the bees dispersed, they walked out of the tomb with ~20+ bees completely surrounding them. Needless to say, it looked like something out of the X-files or the Twilight Zone. Eek. We ended our day with a harrowing tuk-tuk ride (Jill has an amazing photo of this) to Connaught Place, the center of New Delhi. What is a tuk-tuk you ask? We theorize that it is a moped, with a body placed over it (open on both sides), with a small bench in the back. It was more than a tight squeeze- we had a death grip on the tuk-tuk and each other to prevent falling out of the sides and/or getting hit by another car/moped/bike/donkey/cow/person....
Our last night in Delhi ended with dinner and a "local" (or rebottled something) at Q'bar, supposedly the 15th best bar in the world. We all felt a little underdressed but it was delicious and refreshing nonetheless.
This morning we awoke bright and early (3:15am!) to get to the airport by 4:30 for a flight to Bangalore. We arrived without a hitch and checked into the annexe III of St. John's Medical College- we each get our own room and our own bathroom. There are med students here from Sweden and England, and quite a few from all over the US. We are really looking forward to meeting some new people and seeing medicine from a few different perspectives. It was wonderful to finally unpack and try to feel a little more at home (I really wish I had some kind of poster to hang on the wall...its a little bare...)
A quick first impression of Bangalore- very modern, and seems to be much more manageable than Delhi. A little calmer (not quite the same as home, but calmer), and LOTS of western influence, and LOTS of huge companies over here...we're 5km away from 3M, and IBM and Dell are even closer.
After unpacking we propmptly realized we were responsible for our own toilet paper. We ventured out into our neighborhood and found TP, some fruit, shampoo, soap, etc. We also found a new favorite hangout, Cafe Coffee Day, which advertises free wi-fi internet. (And air conditioning!!!)...we eagerly packed up our computers and prepared for skype/facebook/photos/etc only to find the internet was down. Sigh. Currently all four of us are sitting in an outdoor internet cafe, paying 10 rupees (20 cents) per each half an hour. The monitor I am looking at appears to be older than me. Hopefully our coffee shop of choice gets its internet up and running and we'll be able to post some photos for you all...
Tomorrow....we're going to see the Hunger Games!!! Its going to be great.
Oofta, that was a novel...
Namaste Friends!
KJ
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