Delhi seems to be the meeting place for long lost friends. While being dragged about various shops and merchants to look at clothing and rugs I didn’t want (by a rickshaw driver), I accidentally ran into Andrew and Mari — two friends that I started my journey with in Canada. And, later in the day whilst on a bus to the airport, I ran into Steve from Crawley who was on his way to Indonesia.
The goal for the day was to get all of the mail I’ve been having friends and family send to the Delhi Post Office; only, a “mysterious” government holiday was declared and the post office was inexplicably closed. No one else in the city seemed to be observing a holiday; as was evidenced when we went to Wimpy’s for lunch and everyone was decked out in their best jeans and t-shirts. I think this is my first “western” experience I’ve had since coming to India 4 months ago; a burger and fries combo never looked so good (coming from the person who shuns burger chains).
While in the city we wandered from park to park just soaking up the sun, playing a bit of ultimate, and in search of someone to repair our well worn shoes. The price to get our shoes repaired was 5 rupees per shoe but this kept changing as the repairs progressed — pretty typical. While the shoe repair saga was going on I watched elephants doing street work in utter fascination. There’s something strangely compelling about watching a creature that is as large as a construction vehicle doing work.
