So we met some students and talked to them for a bit, well, mostly Zypy and Swaffy, I didn't talk to them much. They directed us to this big long stretch of electronics stores that was a little bit underground, we got there, there was a metal detector to go through. Clay, Liz, Mike and I decided it wasn't worth having our bags searched and waited outside while the rest went through to try to find Zypy's charger. We talked, eventually sent Mikey in to figure out what was up, they all came back out – no luck, the charger was too expensive. We decided to head back towards the hotel and stop at a supermarket on the way to grab a few things. Well, we didn't find the supermarket, but we did find the aforementioned coffee shop with my delicious dessert and brief free wi-fi. After that we got back to walking, eventually got back to where we needed to be, and headed towards the supermarket. Unfortunately, Clay, Liz, Brenna and Zypy stopped, deciding to head back to the hotel, when I talked to them I lost track of Mike and Swaffy, so no supermarket for me.

General thoughts on Delhi. At one point I said to David it's Bangkok +, like Bangkok, but more. That's not exactly true. There are street vendors, yeah, but not nearly as many. The streets are a lot busier with vehicles, there are pedestrians, but not in the same choking way as Bangkok. Also, the land here is just more beat up, there's all sorts of torn up roads and construction work going on, which is really what makes navigation difficult more than anything else. There's LOTS of these little three-wheeled green taxis with yellow canvas tops, also bicycle tuktuks (maybe the motorized ones are tuktuks too?), some buses. People generally speak more and better English, and also really, really want you to use whatever service it is they're offering. The horns blaring in the street are even more common than Bangkok, it's a bit overwhelming. The scents are... less pleasant, not just smog and trash, but yes, the excrement I was warned about by other travelers. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely there. Government officials, at least the few I talked to with the tourist office, feel very similar to the businesspeople they're assuring you are giving you bad deals or aren't safe.

Also, we came at an interesting time for tourists in India. I'm not clear what happened, but some sort of crime was recently committed by a tourist, clearly a high-profile case, so all hotels now have to report all tourists to the police, there's no visitors allowed in our hotel room, we ALL had to sign in our passports and they made copies, we all had to sign our names, a regulation was recently enacted about not being allowed to re-enter India within 2 months of leaving that we had to deal with (since our trip was planned months before that regulation). It's intense. Not really affecting us too much, other than the issue with reentry that we should be okay on, but an interesting thing nonetheless.

PS at 5 PM - “Wild Thing” has been stuck in my head almost all day. It made today far, far superior.

Tuesday, February 2nd, roughly 4:05-4:15 PM local time