India!

Our school calendar was a little weird this year in the way that we had about a week off in December, for Christmas, then back to school for a week and a half, and then we have 2 weeks off in the middle of January as our "Winter Holiday". If it seems a little weird that we went to India in the middle of January, it is, but that's alright because it was a blast.

We have some friends from Singapore (we love you Smiths!) who now live in Delhi so we decided to go visit them! And WOW did we have SO MUCH FUN in just 4 days!

We mainly stayed in Delhi, but we did take a day trip to Agra as well.

Hauz Khaz Village
We spent some time on the first day walking around Hauz Khaz village which has religious monuments dating back to the 14th century. It was super cool to walk around these old ruins and look at the architecture and nature surrounding all of it!

(Side note: We also learned the correct way to pronounce Himalayas. Instead of hi-MALAY-as (the way you probably just said it in your head), it is actually, hi-MOLLY-as)

Lohri Celebration
Lohri is a Punjabi celebration which celebrates the end of the winter season. It is traditionally celebrated with lighting a big bonfire and throwing various items (such as popcorn and peanuts) into the fire because they believe feeding the fire will bring you blessings. There was lots of food and some fun dancers accompanied by LOUD drummers!

Adam especially got really into circling the fire while throwing the food into it

Old Delhi
We went on a walking food tour of Old Delhi. We all LOVED it! We went on a tour (I'll explain why that was really important in a second) and our guide took us around the streets of Old Delhi to try various street foods and traditional Indian foods. Now, why it was vital to have a guide. There are dozens of people selling food on the streets, however, the guide knew exactly where to take us to eat where we wouldn't get sick. There were lots of people selling the same types of food, however only certain places where we weren't going to get sick. And guess what? We ate LOTS (for pretty much 6 hours consecutively) and didn't get sick!!

Chickpea (something)

If we were going to get sick from anything, it would have been this (luckily we didn't) it was a milk solids dessert!

No, we didn't eat these :)

Dessert! 

Buffalo Biryani Rice!

We also went to the largest Spice Market in Asia and the Flower Market! Both were incredible and very fun! 

 Now, other than the incredible food, walking around Old Delhi is an interesting experience in and of itself, especially for a 17 year old blonde American girl. I might as well have been walking on stilts while playing a trombone with fireworks going off around me. Now, I have been used to people staring at me, taking pictures and being utterly shocked to see a blonde person pretty much the entire time I've lived in Asia. But Old Delhi was just a completely different ball game. All I can say is that they were a lot less discrete taking pictures here than they are in Kuwait :)

Lodi Gardens
After the craziness (but fun time) in Old Delhi, we walked around the Lodi Gardens. The scenery was just gorgeous, and so were the old mosques and tombs!

Dilli Haat
Dilli Haat is an open air market in Delhi that has artisans from every state in India. I've always been a fan of walking around markets, and Adam and Sydney (especially Adam) are trinket collectors so markets are the perfect places for them! There was music and dancing and decorations, and it was just a fun environment to be in!

Making a rug/carpet

Agra
What is in Agra? What is worth driving 3 hours to, spending the day walking around, and then driving 5 hours home? (yay for Delhi traffic)

Taj Mahal
First of all, our friend Robin arranged an absolutely incredible guide for us at the Taj Mahal. He made sure that he didn't leave anything out when explaining the history or intricate details. He also shared with us that he has been to the Taj 5 times when there was pretty much nobody there because he has taken quite a few international officials on private tours around this historic landmark, which says a lot in and of itself just how amazing he was. We also learned very quickly that when he said "May I please see your camera so I can take a picture?" or "Here, stand here and I'll take a picture", we let him have exactly what he asked for because he knew exactly what he was doing.

Anyway, so when you first get to Agra and into the Taj Mahal area, you come around a corner, and through an archway, you get to see the Taj Mahal. Mind-blowing. It is just so incredibly magnificent. Then as you get closer, it just gets better and better. There really aren't any words to describe it. It is more incredible than any of the pictures you see. It did not disappoint. At all. The entire building is completely symmetrical, which is even more remarkable when you think about it being built in the 17th Century. (fun fact, there is a mosque on one side of the Taj Mahal that is still used today. For symmetrical purposes, they built a mosque on the other side of the Taj to balance it out that isn't used because it doesn't face Mecca. It is simply there to balance it out)

"Fake" mosque

The benefit of waking up early to go is that it wasn't very crowded at all when we got there

Agra Fort
The Agra for is also just incredible (if you ever go to the Taj Mahal, adding in a trip to the Agra Fort is also worth it!) There is so much history surrounding the fort. Shah Jahan (the one who constructed the Taj Mahal for his wife) was actually imprisoned there by his son and died in his room that had a balcony looking out on the Taj Mahal. We only got to tour about 20% of it because the fort is still in use today.
I'm really not doing the fort justice, but it is fascinating to read about.

(zoomed in) view of the Taj Mahal from the fort

Salaam Baker Walking Tour
The cool thing about this specific walking tour in Delhi is that it is lead by kids who used to live on the streets in India, or "street kids". It was really interesting to hear all about street kids in Delhi and the associated problems. We ended our tour at their main office where we played games with some of the kids for a little while.
There are lots of programs similar to this all over India, which is pretty remarkable.

Sikh Temple (Gurudwara Bangla Sahib) 
We went on a tour of a largest Sikh temple in Delhi. It was definitely an interesting cultural experience. Something pretty cool that sikh temples do is they have kitchens where they prepare food that they give to people, for free (they feed thousands of people EVERY DAY). They give food to absolutely anyone and everyone who wants the food. We spent some time in the kitchen helping make chapati.

We had to cover our hair, hence why we have neon orange head coverings

We were doing a great job of making sure that no one got sick the entire trip, until the day we were flying out. Early in the morning the day that we were leaving, I did not feel good. At all. Well, turns out I had a lovely little case of food poisoning. Let me just say that having food poisoning while traveling is one of the worst experiences ever. What made it worse was that our flight in Delhi got delayed, which caused us to miss our connecting flight from Dubai to Kuwait. So we got to hang out in the Dubai airport for an extra 4 hours. Yay! Super lucky the round with food poisoning only lasted for 16ish hours.



We loved India and all the fun things that we got to do there! Thank you Smiths for letting us stay with you and having an incredible itinerary planned!