day two in delhi

Hi! I actually left the guest house today, so i have pictures. Above is my room at Sunny Guest House. Pretty basic as you can see, in other words it is a closet. It is clean though, and i am able to sleep in it, and the door locks so i am happy. My one complaint would be that there is some animal living inside my ceiling and it moves around a lot at night. It doesn't keep moving like a mouse, and it sounds a lot bigger. I did my best to ignore it and it helped when i turned on the light and looked for any holes it could escape through. I think it would be my worse nightmare if a giant Delhi rat came into my room while i was sleeping and i woke up and it was in there with me. Ok, i don't want to talk about this anymore.
The rest of the photos are of the Red Fort in Old Delhi. It was really beautiful in there as you can see. It used to be the palace of a Mughal emperor in the 1600's.

Getting there was... interesting. It is about 8km away from where I'm staying, so i took a pre-paid auto rickshaw to a gate near it so I could walk the rest of the way. The rickshaw ride was an experience in itself- I don't know how they do it! We almost hit a dog and i shrieked in the back seat. The driver thought that was pretty funny. Anyway, we hit some major traffic (i think we were where Old Delhi began) and the driver tried to tell me in Hindi that he couldn't go in there and I would have to take a bicycle rickshaw. I was pissed off and told him in English that he should have said something at the pre-paid stand. We argued for a bit, him speaking Hindi and me speaking English, and eventually I won (success!) and he paid the bicycle rickshaw driver to take me the rest of the way.

I probably sound like a big jerk, arguing with some poor driver over 10 rupees, but you have to understand how tired i get of arguing over every little thing that has to do with money. I would be happy to pay a little more to not have to deal with the hassle of getting ripped off or having to pay a hidden fee that wasn't mentioned from the beginning.

Anyway, the Red Fort was nice and peaceful compared to outside. After that, I went out into Old Delhi and wandered around. Remember yesterday when I said that India wasn't as crazy as I was expecting? It's because i was in the quiet part! There is all kinds of stuff going on in Old Delhi. You should see the wiring- AMAZING. It looks like a bird's nest. I really wanted to take more pictures, but I was already drawing enough attention to myself being a western woman alone in a bright red hoodie, so I decided to just take it in. Maybe next time the nest o' wires will make it to the blog. It was fun walking around. I found a nice mosque with some steps outside. I sat there for awhile and people-watched.

Tomorrow I head off to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. I am taking the train there. The journey takes about 3 or 4 hours. After Agra, I think I'm going to Varanasi. At this point, the itinerary is very open, so if anyone has any suggestions, please email me and tell me what it is.
Until next time...