The Delhi trip ...

This is my first trip to North India ... let me rephrase that : this is my first trip north from what I can remember. I was born in Indore , and parents were the travelling type ... so I am supposed to have "visited" lot of Rajastan and MadhyaPradesh ... though I was <= 1 year old then !

So , back to the post - this is the first time I am going so far up north ... the most 'north' I have been to before must be Bombay :-) Considering how little I can remember hindi (almost zero for practical purposes) , I was expecting a tough time :-P.
The arrangements by my company went flawlessly ... surprise surprise ! I was expecting some hiccups - was too smooth to be believed (hmm , maybe the roadblocks will come in when I try to reimburse the trip :-P).

Man was it hot there ! When I did walk under the afternoon sun , I could almost feel something peeling off my face ! Really really exhausting heat - and the worst part is, the taxi guy was telling me that it had rained last week and so it is much "colder" now !!! I would hate to stay there when it is "hot" then :-P.

Wanted to get a gift for mom ... and lo , whereever I go , I see clothes , more clothes and still more clothes ! I went to a couple of bazaars and all of them were choke full of clothes !
Now , there are things I am ok at , but shopping for clothes is definitely not one of them :-) (bargaining is another things I suck at btw ;-) ) Colour is not something I can 'understand' well , and I usually end up hating clothes I buy for myself ! So this was definitely a bad turn as far as getting a gift was going ...
Changed my intention to - get some showpiece for mom ... and however much I search , nothing ! Finally , thanks to Shireen and Kanwar's suggestion , I ended up at Delhi Haat ... this place is really enjoyable !
The 'crafts' displayed here is truely incredible ... if I had the money (and the space to carry them) , I guess I would have bought many many more things ! And mind you , I am not the kind of person who likes shopping :-)
I am not sure how economical it is to buy from there though. Irrespective of that , it was an amazing riot of color , culture and tradition. Some of the handcrafted artifacts on display make you feel really proud of being a part of such an awesome country ... the expanse of Indian culture , crafts and heritage is showcased to a small degree at Delhi Haat and it is a truely amazing spectacle. (hmm , did not see anything from Kerala there btw :-( ).

Next time you are at Delhi , make it a point to visit it !
Hmm , to more frequent visitors (or maybe people used to similar exhibitions) I might be sounding a tad bit overzealous and nutty :-P I dont care , I had a ball of a time ... except for the sweltering heat :-D

Oh ya , got the visa too ... was kind of anticlimax considering the amount of documents the travel agent made me carry. The only part I regret about the Visa interview was that I had to "shutup" and agree with that chap about something he said - a gross design flaw.
Arguing would have resulted in :
a) Spending 30 mins explaining something I doubt if he would have understood anyway. AND
b) Manager will not be too happy to see me come back without a visa :-)
In case you are interested , he was trying to argue that the xmpp server needs to poll the connected clients really frequently (and he meant in the order of seconds or 10's of seconds) to 'verify the user status and connectivity'. I wish people would not make assertions about subjects they know jack shit about *sigh* ...

Btw , flight to delhi felt like a bus ride (jam packed nature and the chairs seriously reminded me of KSRTC FP buses !!) and the ride back was like a train ride :-P I think I am excessively pampered by my frequent trips in Kingfisher airlines :-D

And no , I did not 'see the sights' , and no I did not have trouble with hindi (I think I did fabulously well in the 'speaking in hindi' department ;-) ) and lastly , no I did not bargain much for the stuff I bought :-P