The first thing you are hit with upon entering customs is the smell of New Delhi. It smells like a wet campfire that permeates the entire city - it even gets in your clothes. The luggage handlers greet you outside the baggage collection like flies. you shew them away, they flow away with the energy then pull right back in only to land again on your luggage - not hover nearby, but LAND. It kind of reminds me of being in the Haunted House at Disneyland when you suddenly look up and notice a ghost, or in this case a luggage handler, walking by your side with his hands on your luggage. They're harmless enough. I don't even think it's a matter of determination or riteousness or even neediness. It's just a way of life.
Other notes: Stepping outside the hotel, I immediately landed in feces of some sort. The hotel food has been some of the best Indian food I've tasted in my life - thus far. Horns honk in a continuous mutiny that would make even New York envious. Early in the A.M. I found hotel several workers sleeping under paint tarps on the floors. The people are quite lovely.
Gopal and I agreed that the men are cute, some pretty/handsome, but not sexy. Gopal attributes this to their general deameanor. I think it has something to do with, something my mom picked up, unlike America where we flaunt our sex and hide our religion, in India one openly expresses their spiritual beliefs but hide their sexuality. Of course, my mom was the first to bring up sex in a company of young men during dinner! That and expressing to the groom how to have a happy marriage which includes the equality of women. I think she's single-handedly going to initiate women's rights in India. :P
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