Mystery Tour

Today's events (times are approximate):

5:30am: Dawn/awaking
7:30am: Breakfast
9-11am: Bus ride to Old Delhi and tour of the Red Fort
11:30am: Attempted visit to the largest mosque in India before afternoon services, only to discover that it was closed to non-Muslims owing to the death of the former Imam. A huge flock of large black birds was circling over the mosque. Eerie.
11:45am: Lunch for meat eaters at Karim's (famous) Moghul restaurant. Mutton kebab, mutton byriani, mutton curry shared by the four carnivores in our group. The mutton was most certainly freshly slaughtered, probably locally acquired from one of the many streets lined with idle sheep tied to walls. The vegetarians had paneer, vegetable curry, daal, and we all shared rice and butter naan. The naan continues to be the best I've ever had in my life.
12:30-2pm: Attempt to find tea stall down an alley only to find it closed. Pestered by beggar child. While my back was turned to him I heard a loud smack, but ignored it thinking the boy had (for whatever inexplicable reason) clapped his hands to get us to pay attention to him. As it turns out, a nearby man had smacked him upside the head for harrassing us. He walked off for a little while but hung around near us, then when we walked away he continued to follow us. While we were standing at the mouth of the alley, he kept putting his hand out saying, "Please money, please money" in the most pitifully obnoxious way. I simply ignored him, while our professor told him no and to go away in Hindi. Then we were again split into two groups and received two envelopes each with pieces of paper on which were written new locations in Hindi for us to find. The first was another Sikh temple, though smaller than the one from the day before. To get there we had to walk down this dirt road, which was lined on both sides with tarps under which sat appallingly impoverished people. This teeny tiny little boy wearing all yellow and wearing the white cap of Islam started talking to and strutting down the street with us. He was probably 4 or 5, but was completely alone just running at the mouth saying who knows what. Eventually we reached a main road at the end of the winding parade of severe poverty. We got further directions and walked down this sidewalk lined with stalls while we were harrassed by merchants trying to lure us into their store. Finally we reached the temple, leaving our shoes outside, stepping in the water before crossing the threshhold, then pulling our scarves over our heads. Then we sat in the main room for a while and enjoyed the men singing and playing music, watching worshippers pay their respects. Afterwards we asked directions to the next location, which turned out to be a Jain temple we had seen earlier from across the street at the Red Fort. We again checked our shoes outside the entrance, then went in the gate. Unlike the Sikh temple, the grounds were disgusting. Dirty and covered in pigeon shit. We tried to get inside to the temple but it turned out they were hosing it down and the gates up into it were closed. It was so filthy outside we left after about 5 minutes. We put our shoes on, tipped the attendant 10 rupees, then got in a tuktuk and went back to the hotel. On the road we passed a shanty town with naked children sleeping on dirty blankets outside of shacks while older children and adults either sat around or walked between shacks in dirty clothes. We also passed a rickshaw stable full of horses and donkeys. When we got back to the hotel, we retired to our respective rooms.
2pm-3pm: watched BBC World News/Discovery Channel
3pm-4pm: napped
4pm: wake up call
5:40pm: woke up to my teacher calling to ask if I'd be joining the group to discuss our discoveries from earlier, having fallen right back to sleep after receiving my wake up call.
5:40-6:30pm: discussion
6:45pm-8pm: dinner at Kwality Restaurant, typical North Indian cuisine. I got to hold my professors' baby, Isabella. She really liked me. Enough so that her father got slightly jealous when Bella's mother said, she likes you because you're nice and fun. He said, "I'm nice and fun."
8pm-12:30am: walked back to the hotel, said goodnight to our teachers, then hung out in one of our rooms, smoking, talking, and then ordered Benson and Hedges, Kingfisher, and hot milk to satisfy the various cravings of the five of us. Group bonding, yay.

Tomorrow we are taking a tour in the morning of New Delhi, then after lunch we have the afternoon free to roam about and go shopping for handicrafts and souvenirs.