Lots of road travel today, which is boring in any country, so let’s instead talk about kabaddi. Melissa and I went to the hotel bar the other night to enjoy a cocktail while playing a game. The TV had on a “sport” that was incomprehensible to us, yet also hilarious. This is kabaddi. On tv, it looks like crotch-shot touch football done while holding hands. Or an insect mating ritual crossed with mixed martial arts – while holding hands. Seriously – go look it up. I’ll wait.

RIGHT?! Kabaddi is hilariously, weirdly intense yet also captivating.

Fast forward 3.5 hours and we made it to Fatehpur Sikri, a palatial complex built in just 12 years starting in 1571. Featuring a palace for each of his 3 wives, fabled to each come from a different religion, as well as parliamentary buildings and a religious compound, the site is magnificent and well-deserving of its UNESCO World Heritage Site status. As a marker of the inability of humanity to learn, it seems that nobody thought to test the local water, and so the compound was abandoned less than a decade after it was completed because of a lack of access to fresh drinking water. Rookie mistake.

Next to the palace grounds is the spiritual compound. There’s a mausoleum to the parliamentary leader (white building in the photo above, center), a massive mosque behind the mausoleum (still in use today!), and a truly massive (54 meters!) gate (left) to mark the entry to the site. This entire area is done barefoot, so we left our shoes outside with a boy to watch them and we hot-stepped our way around inside.

Weirdly, there was no guard or sign to remind women to cover their heads. Whether it’s your custom or not, I think all visitors should respect the custom of those who worship in the houses we visit. Thankfully, we had scarves and pulled them up to cover our heads, but not all tourists did and that made me mad. This is an active house of worship, so come prepared or admire it from outside!

We got the road again and picked up our Agra guide on the way to the Taj Mahal sunset viewing area. Along the walk, we talked about tourists. Boston gets 22-23 million tourists a year (and I believe every last one comes to the North End to eat, walk slowly in large groups down our tiny sidewalks, and buy cannoli and then dump the boxes on our streets). The Taj Mahal gets 15,000 a DAY! I was observing how it can be a mixed bag to have so many tourists – they spend money but they also generally behave badly – and he noted that in Agra, tourism is basically the only job. Because the government wants to protect the Taj Mahal from pollution, there’s no manufacturing, airport, or other polluting industry allowed in the area, and that means few jobs.

Taj Mahal is stunning, even from afar. Its absolute perfect symmetry is calming and peaceful and beautiful. The designs are too fine to see from several hundred meters away, but our cameras hint at the splendor that we will see at sunrise tomorrow.

After a hearty breakfast (it doesn’t appear that we will encounter any meal that isn’t hearty), we hit the road for Jaipur.

Our driver, Amit, is highly amusing. We talked about kids (he has 2 but admits that he thinks that’s one too many), tourist quality (Americans, Brits, and Aussies are his favorites because we are all punctual, although Americans take first place since we spend the most), and how we came to select Holiday Tours to be our operator (I found them on Viator but booked directly; I liked them because they were attentive without being annoying or selling hard).

I feel exceptionally well looked-after at all times. He’s learned that we love the Diet Coke here, and he drops hints to other service providers to not offer us tea but instead to serve a nice, cold, Diet Coke. It’s effective, because I agree with Ted Lasso that “tea is horrible. Absolute garbage water.” A Diet Coke, on the other hand, will get me to stay and chat a while.

After arriving in Jaipur, we drove around a bit. This city is much bigger than Ranthambore, and it has a different vibe than Delhi. The architecture is visible everywhere and gorgeous. Nicknamed the “Pink City” because of the dominant color of the Old City’s buildings, Jaipur has a slightly more jaunty feel to it than Delhi did.

We had some lunch at a place popular with tourists. I am sure that the tour operators have arrangements with certain stores and restaurants. While I don’t love that idea, I also suspect that means that the restaurants generally don’t give patrons food poisoning, so that’s a sacrifice I’ll accept. Similarly, I know I can get better prices on the street, but a) I absolutely do not enjoy haggling, b) I have no idea how much to even offer here (I know the US prices, but not the Indian ones), c) I trust the quality of the goods sold at stores the tour operator recommends, and d) these stores take credit cards.

This all matters because we did some rather high-end shopping. Jaipur is known for gemstones and the jewelry they make from the stones they cut, and while I wasn’t planning on buying fancy jewelry, I immediately caved when I saw that they do a lot with emeralds (my favorite!) and that their creations are so unique compared to the generally boring, generic stuff we get in the US. Aside from jewelry, we bought some spices, small artwork, and cashmere pashminas.

We met our guide for the evening and tomorrow and then set off on foot through the bazaar. Holy cow, it’s insane! Between the traffic, the density of people, and tiny shops selling absolutely everything imaginable, it is a lot to take in!

The Hawa Mahal (“Palace of Winds”) was constructed in 1799. It has 953 small windows with lattice designs that were intended to allow royal women to observe life in the street below without being seen. This view is actually the back side of the palace, not the front. It’s colorful and ornate and unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

Tomorrow is chock full of sights with our private driver and guide, as well as massages. Add in the 5-star hotel accommodations and I truly feel like royalty myself.

Two safari drives in Ranthambore National Park filled today’s dance card. This park has ~80 Royal Bengal Tigers, and sightings are not uncommon (although not guaranteed, either). The park is a little over 500 square miles in size, but only 20% of that space is open to tourists who are then assigned to one of the 10 tourist zones. Tigers roam solo or in small groups, putting the odds of seeing one around 1 in 10 to 1 in 20. Sadly, we struck out 0 for 2 today.

After a quick coffee, we headed out to meet the Safari vehicle for the morning drive. Roads are relatively quiet at that hour (I’m using the term “relatively quiet” liberally) so we made good time to zone 10.

Deer and antelopes were plentiful, suggesting that the area was light on apex predators today, and they proved to be an accurate indicator since we saw no predators. We did see lots of other critters, though, and an open safari vehicle is a great way to see the land.

The drive back to the hotel after the morning safari was nuts. NUTS! Every manner of transport shares the road: bicycles, tuktuks, rickshaws, tractors, mopeds and motorcycles, busses, cars, safari vehicles, trucks, pedestrians, cows, and camels.

After a solid breakfast and trip to the pool, we headed out for the late afternoon safari drive in zone 8. Again, no tigers, but we saw other animals.

Zone 8 has a lot of elevation, so we also enjoyed magnificent views of the region from the top.

On the way out, we learned that a tiger in zone 8 had killed a sambar deer in the morning. That would certainly explain why zone 8 was quiet in the evening – tigers with fully bellies don’t need to hunt.

While I am sad that I didn’t get to see tigers, I also recognize how exceptionally fortunate I am. Not only am I in India – a place most people will never get to – but I’ve also had enumerate wildlife encounters. I’ve been slapped (in the hand, while in a safe metal cage!) by a Great White Shark in South Africa, watched cheetahs chase a warthog across the plains of Kenya, seen polar bears harass a walrus in Svalbard, had a honey badger eat my dinner leftovers in Botswana, mushed a husky team across a volcano in Chile, and stared down a hyena 10 feet from me. I can’t complain. Not at all.

I expected India to be different – really different – from other places I’ve been. In some ways, it is. New Delhi is contemporary, with broad streets, fancy hotels, and upscale shopping. There is an air of American aspirationalism, be it the Starbucks on the corner, the McDonalds at every highway rest area, or the US-branded shops that line every street.

Other parts of India are totally unlike New Delhi, yet they remind me of many other impoverished places I’ve been in the global south. Morocco, Kenya, Botswana, etc. Homes and shops are built one wall at a time as people can afford the materials, and they are informally laid out around town. Bikes, scooters, cars, dogs, goats, pigs, and all other manner of animals roam through the streets and property. Some people are working at their trades, while others sit about idle. Kids are everywhere. EVERYWHERE.

We had a very long drive today from Delhi to Ranthambore. The first half was on a large freeway, sometimes 14 lanes wide in ONE direction. The rest was on small roads winding through various villages.

We got to the hotel after 2pm and opted to stay here for the afternoon since there isn’t much to see in town. After doing some laundry, we went to the pool for a bit and tried not to fall asleep.

We watched some traditional musicians and even did a little dancing ourselves before heading to dinner. OMG, Indian food in India is no joke. Even the “not spicy” foods have a real kick to them, and it is all so tasty and fragrant and delicious that it makes me sad to think about what bland combination of sugar and fat that we call “food” awaits me when I return to the states.

And since we are dead-dog tired at 9pm, it is time for bed. The hotel courtyard seems to be transformed into a dance club at night and our room is thumping with the blaring music, but I would have to be way less tired than I am currently to care at all. I have tigers to see tomorrow and so I need to be rested for my 5:30am wake-up!

We made it!

From Boston to London, neither of us really slept, partly because the flight time was mostly outside of sleep time (we left at 7pm, so by the time they serve dinner and you watch a movie, it’s nearly time to land), and partly because we had the absolute BEST flight attendant working our section of the plane. Jake was absolutely hilarious, and we chatted with him on and off the whole flight (enough so that another member of the crew asked if we were taking Jake with us on our trip since we had such a great time with him on the flight).

By the time we got through immigration, I was a zombie. A tired zombie with a pounding headache. Heathrow is hostile to sleep, but it turns out they have an AmEx centurion lounge which we could get into with my credit card. SO much more civilized! Still didn’t offer anything that I would call sleeping space, but there was food, comfortable seating, it was quiet, and our stuff felt much safer there than it would in the mayhem of gen pop.

The 2nd flight was also fine. I was a bit worried because our boarding passes said we were in row 77, but every seat map I could find for Virgin Atlantic only went to 66 rows, but there were, in fact, 85+ rows on this massive jet, so we were ok. I slept a bit, but Melissa slept very little (if any), so we were dragging when we landed in Delhi at 3am. By the time we got through immigration, to our bags, and found our driver, it was 4:30am – an hour I am confident I have never seen before.

We checked into the hotel, then slept for 6 hours. It was such good sleep. After some coffee, our driver picked us up and we headed from New Delhi (where our hotel is) into Old Delhi to walk around the markets a bit and get oriented to the city.

Driving here is certainly not for the faint of heart. Cars, rickshaws, tuktuks, pedestrians, handcarts…it all is just sort of there, on the road, moving in whatever direction desired. Red lights mean very little and I wouldn’t trust a pedestrian light for any amount of money. Our driver has done an admirable job so far of navigating safely, and we survived 2 rickshaw rides, as well!

The markets lean more toward wholesale or mass-produced things in the area we were in; it wasn’t for souvenirs. Still, walking around and looking at all the things for sale (and how they are displayed) was very interesting. It’s crowded everywhere, yet people don’t seem to bump into each other much.

Everything looks slightly chaotic, but there’s a hum and fluidity to the movement along the street that makes it feel less daunting. Or maybe you just get used to it by shutting down some of our senses to prevent overload. Or maybe both.

We went for an early dinner at a local establishment, Sandoz, and it was delicious! I really appreciate that India understands vegetarianism, and finding food I can eat is a breeze. Some dal, butter masala paneer, and paneer-stuffed naan…mmmmm. And despite being a slightly costly place by Delhi standards, we only spent $17 total on dinner. I jacked up the bill by getting a Diet Coke (Indian Diet Coke is very good, I can report!).

Tomorrow we have a lengthy day of driving, heading over to Ranthambore National Park. We have 2 safari drives, and I am hopeful that at least one will yield a Royal Bengal Tiger sighting. Along the way, our driver said he would make some stops in the villages and countryside so we can get a sense of what life is like for the vast majority of Indians who don’t live in one of the major cities. I’m ready for it!

If you’ve ever read any of my posts, you know how this goes:

“Oh, that’s a great deal on airfare to India! Anybody want to go with me?”

And so, Melissa and I depart for India tomorrow evening. The Taj Mahal, Jaipur, Agra, Delhi, a national park (hopefully with a tiger sighting!), an elephant sanctuary, and a million other new experiences that I can’t even imagine await us…