10/17/10-10/20/10:New Delhi and Mussoorie

Sunday, after being on an all night plane from London, we landed in New Delhi. There is a four hour time difference here from London, so our first two days in India were extremely disorienting. (For your info that means there is a ten hour time difference compared to the US.) When we got to the hotel we would stay the night at, all four of us crashed and took a three hour nap.

After we were rested Grandpa took us to a park to take a nice walk.

Some buildings in the park.

After being in and about the Austrian mountains, Delhi's weather was actually hot. I enjoyed it though. Another fact about Deli, there are monkeys everywhere. The people who reside here think them as pests, such as an American would think of a Raccoon. (Well, I guess mostly Tennesseans would make that comparison.) But, its really neat seeing them everywhere, wheres the only place I've seen them before is in a zoo. Another animal I've noticed here are the bats. They are HUGE! Looking up into the sky at night after our walk in the park, I was surprised to see bats the size of hawks flying everywhere! Okay, maybe they were not quite that large, but they were at least five times the size of bats I'm used to seeing.

As tired as we were from all the traveling and jet lag, Steve and I slept maybe two hours. Mainly because the natives were having one of their annual festivals, called the Dussehra Celebration. It is the celebration of the triumph of good over evil, or something in the like. The festival included shooting off fireworks ALL NIGHT LONG right outside our hotel, and everyone was making lots of noise 'to ward off the evil spirits'. Another tradition of the Dussehra Celebration is burning a giant representation of 'the demon king.' Anyways, the next day we were exhausted.

Oh, and to add to our exhaustion, we had to leave the hotel at six in the morning to catch a train that would take us to Dera Dun. The train was nice to be on though, Steve and I slept peacefully the entire five hours of the ride. Once in Dera Dun, we took a taxi all the way up to Mussoorie, where my grandfather spent his childhood. (I missed the view going up into the mountains though, because I slept the whole taxi ride.)

We are staying at a dormitory close to the famous Woodstock school called the Hanifl Center. The only other people in the dorm are Woodstock alumni returning for a class reunion.

The view from the window near my bed.

After we had settled into our living quarters for six days, we went out to the markets. They are really a fun experience to have, and it's fun to go shopping there. :) The Rupee is what Indian currency is called, and there are about forty of them to an American dollar, so everything here is insanely cheap to an American, and I'm really enjoying that fact, haha.

On Tuesday, we walked half a mile to the school and ate breakfast there. (That is where we eat every morning because the school is hosting us since Grandpa is an alumni.) After wards, we had a guide take us on a hike to one of the many villages in the mountains. It was a pretty decent hike distance wise, being four miles round trip. The villages were definitely different than our 'typical' life style. Once you see how people live in a village, it really makes you appreciate the way you live.

This is a school.

1st-5th grade.

An adorable little boy.

Today, Wednesday, after breakfast Grandpa, Grandma, Steve, and I went to visit the school dormitories with some of Grandpa's old classmates. I thought it was really neat listening to the alumni talk about how things used to be, how things have changed, and just tell stories they had of when they lived in those very dorms fifty or so years ago. I loved listening to them.

On our tour of the dormitories, we also saw a lot of monkeys. The school has actually 'hired' three Langur monkeys to chase the pesty smaller monkeys away from the buildings. If that really keeps the pests away, I'm not so sure, because we saw quite a few of them still.

A Langur.

One of the monkey pests, of which I can't remember it's name.

That is all for now,
-Jessica.