After arriving in Delhi on the heels of a 25 hour transit from the US, including a 14 hour flight over the NORTH POLE people!! from Seattle to Dubai, I snuck off to my hotel room for a few hours of sleep.  Later I joined friends for a tour of Old Delhi on the back of a bicycle rickshaw through the Chandni Chowk market.. It was the most uncomfortable ride of my life and, of course, it was raining, and I don’t know if it was the lack of sleep, or the fact that I had entered a very different world, but I felt like I was on an acid trip.  The pink turban of the man in front of me was my bicycle rider/driver.  I was in his rickshaw.

Some of my pictures are blurry because he kept us moving.  Some are a little bit more clear, but only because he paused for a moment to let the masses of humanity and animals pass us.  He never gave passage on purpose, but only because he was driven to it by a lack of chance.  I got my first lesson in what it takes to survive in India.  Reticence and fine manners are really low on that list.

        

Yeah, so it was a blur and it was chaotic all around me. And then you notice the electrical wiring and you just wonder how India can operate at all.

And, I gotta say, I never stopped puzzling that last statement for the whole month I was there.  I still don’t know any answers.