At Max's house, in our guestroom.

We woke up this morning early, had tea with Max and Harish, and it was out to the city. We saw this massive clothes washing place, 5000 some workers there, all outside beating clothes against stone and washing them. Sounds odd, I know, but it was actually kind of cool. So we watched that for a bit, then moved on. I frankly don't remember if there was another stop before downtown or not, but we got to an India Gate here, squatter than the other one, but no less beautiful.

Now, see, one of the best things about yesterday was the lack of hawkers and beggars. Seriously, the whole time yesterday, not a one. No such luck today, you go into the more main area of the city... it was nowhere NEAR as bad as Delhi, Agra, or even Jaipur, but still a fair bit. The beggars especially on the road in, when we stopped at a red light or something (a surprising find in India). From there we went to the Taj Mahal Palace, an absolutely beautiful hotel, though somewhat darkened by the terrorist attacks a couple years ago. Unfortunately there was no photography inside, but the whole place is just gorgeous.

We went outside and got a meal at Leopold's, I had a mango lassi and a cheese omelet. Our waiter was... grumpy. Let's say. He wasn't happy about splitting the checks, and when he brought Kanako the wrong order, he forced her to take it, pointing repeatedly at what he had written incorrectly. We didn't tip him.

From there John and I started to head back to the Taj to look at some ties we had seen earlier, though we got distracted by a stand selling fake-old navigation tools. Becky had picked up two sundial-compass-time zone-probably one or two other functions thing there that were actually pretty cool. The guy there was sort of irritating, overused the word “friend” and would clearly direct people away from what they asked for in favor of things that were more expensive, but then again, John picked up a sextant. I mean, that's pretty awesome. The guy kept trying to sell to me, but I just kept telling him no and ignoring him. John also got offered weed, we decided how you find weed in India is to be a white guy smoking a cigarette. Got back to the Taj, back through the (very friendly and efficient) security, and to the tie store. I gotta thank John, I kept looking at different ones, but he kept me firm to the first one I liked, which really was a nice pick. 100% silk nice green striped tie, $22 American. John picked up two, one for himself and one for his dad. The one for himself is this nice blue and yellow, his dad's was a somewhat more traditional white and black, but also beautiful.

We chilled in the AC for a bit, went out, I got offered weed and eventually the guy left me alone after he put his hand on my shoulder and I shrugged it off and glared at him, we watched members of our group get conned by fake holy men (who would bind a cord around their wrists and 'bless' them), and we got back into the taxis. From there we saw Marine Drive, a beautiful view along the ocean, though I guess most of our group was targeted by pickpockets just before my taxi of Zypy, Nate and I got there. Nate and I had great conversations all day, by the way, about multiparty systems, states' rights, gender relations and sex, alcohol, pretty much anything and everything imaginable. It tended towards the political theory side, though.

After the brief ocean view we went up to the hanging gardens, gorgeous gardens where I'm only sad we couldn't see the Towers of Silence where the Zoroastrians leave their dead. I mean, I want to respect the religion, but it would be so cool to see. The gardens were nice though, lots of color, lots of flowers, lots of topiaries. I also had fun messing with Zypy's fundamentalist view of the bible. Because I'm That Guy. We lost our taxi somehow, so I had to cram in with Swaffy and Becky (I forget who was up front) until we somehow found our taxi again. From there it was a pleasant ride back to Max's house, seeing lots of billboards and posters about youth suicide, bindass (we think HIV-positive), and Bollywood films, none of those being related. When we got back I went to the Rolling Beans across the street and used the wireless for a good while, then came back, napped and chilled.

There's a Muslim wedding reception at Max's house tonight, at first we thought we might get food there but that didn't pan out. A whole group of us went to the same winery Nate and I ate at the other night. I had margherita (cheese and tomato) pizza and Raging Bull red wine, a bottle I split with Nate. Pretty good, even if I don't prefer wine. We sat, talked, whatever, dealt with the bill, came back, awkwardly figured out our way around the wedding (no bride and groom yet) and went up to the balcony to watch. By the way, in all this, I'm wearing a long-sleeved button down shirt and shorts, because the laundry guy hasn't brought our clothes back yet. At least two guys were in their bathing suits and shirts. Yeah.

So we watch from the balcony, I regret not having my camera, it was really a beautiful set-up. They have an arch with water cascading down it, this beautiful little covered stage up front where the bride and groom sat when they arrived, lights hanging from the trees, really great. We watched for a while, I was about to head back to the room when Clay stopped me JUST short of mucking the whole thing up, thank you Clay, the bride was here. I went back to the balcony and we watched the bride approach. Now, apparently, marriage in Islam is a legal ceremony, not a religious ceremony, because there was definitely very little ceremony to this at all. The bride and groom entered covered by a canopy carried by four people (one who was on his cell phone for a little bit, classy, sir), but no music, the people sitting there went and got food pretty much as soon as they saw the couple. They went up front and sat on their little stage, people formed a line and went up to wish them well, “salaam” is what Harish told us to say. See, once the line had gone for a while, he took US down to meet the couple. Yeah, some of us, especially the girls, had dressed nice, and some of the guys were alright (Swaffy looked swank), but then there were some of us.... not so much. Harish assured us it would be fine and we got in line, I was right behind Nate. After Nate the bride said “are they all going to say salaam?” amused, and I said “hey, he told us to” pointing to Harish. The couple laughed at that, they seemed pretty relaxed. Beautiful outfits though, the groom in this shiny gold and white affair, the bride in red just dripping with jewelry. Think closer to your generic Bollywood Indian than your generic Middle East Muslim, though there was a blending of styles. We milled about for a bit after that, some people grabbed food but I was pretty set. Nate and Zypy tried to mingle, I followed them briefly but gave up pretty quickly, dunno how they did. I'd be more confident if I had better clothes, but as it was I just felt extremely out of place. So here I am, retreated to the room. We've driven through one wedding and more-or-less attended another. Nooot exactly what I expected of the trip, but hey, expect the unexpected, right?

Friday, February 19th, roughly 10:45-11 PM local time