In the beginning...

It is 10:18 p.m. On Saturday July 20. I need to state that as we awoke at 3:30 a.m. on Friday July 19th to drive to Newark airport and time has two different meanings. The one the clock and calendar states and the one one my body dictates. There really isn't too much to say just yet, this is more of a check in. Both of our flights were great but long. 6 hours to Heathrow, London and 8 hours to Delhi. I watched Life of Pi on the way here as one of many movies and absolutely loved it It was my favorite and not just because of the Indian reference. Thom got all teary eyed. Now when ever I travel I am always the most on edge when it comes to leaving the airport in a new country and getting to your hotel. In Ghana it was midnight and luckily I found the person who was picking me up in the crowd of screaming taxi drivers holding nothing more than a piece of scribbled notebook paper that said "Wormann." In France years ago our plane ran late which made us miss our train which made us miss the person picking us up. In Peru they lost our bags and we had to fill out forms and pray the whole time that our driver would still be out there when we got through the confusion and panic. So knowing what I had read about India I was me taking planing for some chaos. WOW of all places things were so smooth and easy I am still kind of amazed. It wasn't crowded, we got ALL our bags, the driver was there with an official sign and we were able to stay pretty dry as we walked a short distance to the car.
Now it is Monsoon season here but today's rain was pretty hard. Luckily we had landed and missed it because unfortunately another girl in our group got to tell a story like the one's I mentioned above. Her plane got delayed because it couldn't land and there was something else about a crying kid on either side of her on the plane. Yikes! Back to us though, we got in the car which (driver on the right) and headed to the Karol Bagh area of Delhi. It wasn't as crazy as Ghana was but it,t still pretty insane. There is no such thing as a directional it is all about the horn. And lanes are nonexistent. We did see one cow, mopeds, tuk-tuks and rickshaws all over as well.
We are staying tonight at Hotel Perfect. It is decent and clean but you would never know it from the outside. Reminded me of the Hotel in the Muppet Capper but the inside is fine with air conditioning and even a TV. Of course the one channel that is in English is playing the movie Eat Pray Love...HA!

Going to keep this short because I am getting sleepy but we met our guide Monty who seems SUPER! We also met the rest of our group. We are 12 all together consisting of one older couple from New Zealand, another lovely girl who is also a primary (elementary...he he he) teacher from Ireland, two girls from Switzerland and a bunch from the UK. Monty took us to a nice restaurant after our meeting and I had some Chicken tikka with a fresh sweet lime soda and garlic Naan. Tomorrow we are up early for some sight seeing in Old Delhi before we leave on an overnight train to Jaisalmer where we will spend some time on camels in the desert. More with better stories and pictures later!