Another Week Gone By

Wow, we can't believe that this week went by so fast. Anyway, since we last posted:

* We explored Jaipur, visiting the Hawa Mahal and going up in a tall observation tower for a view over the city. We (especially Kelly) fended off the advances of many men along the way.

* For Valentine's Day, Jacob had roses delivered to the hotel room for Kelly. They showed up pretty early, and he couldn't convince her to go downstairs to get them, but he was nice enough to bring them up. Jacob bargained, rather poorly, for some nice earrings for Kelly--100% pure silver!!!, with flawless!!! garnets, amethyst, and blue topaz. (Actually they were stainless steel and plastic.) And Kelly got Jacob two books from the author of The Devil Wears Prada. Those who don't know Jacob's reading tastes may not understand how awesome this is.

* We saw our first pigs. Kelly took a picture of one scratching its back on a food cart. Also more cows, goats, and dogs. The ones in the city don't look as happy as the ones in the countryside.

* On our last day in Jaipur, we were finally convinced (swindled?) by a rickshaw driver who wanted to take us to the beautiful Amber Fort outside the city. It was certainly beautiful, and we got to hike up the hill behind to a second fort.

* We caught a train back to Delhi for our fourth and final time there; ate at our favorite restaurant several more times; and did more walking around New Delhi, visiting several government buildings.

* The evening of the 16th, we took a flight to Mumbai. It was a few hours delayed, and, as always seems to happen, we arrived after midnight. Did some good bargaining (we didn't realize how good at the time) and got a hotel near the airport for 1000 rupees, about $20.

* The next day, we took a cab into town and went out walking around the city. It's much more Western (more European than American) than most of the other cities we've been to lately.

* That evening, we found a gym, where we signed up for a 4-day pass. We haven't been able to go running in almost a month (Kelly in shorts=not appropriate), so getting to work out has been really exciting.

* Yesterday, we went to see Slumdog Millionaire. Both of us read the book last week, so it was fun to see the movie.

Now we're finally doing some last-minute research on Eurail passes. Tomorrow we leave. Looking forward to Cairo both for the pyramids, and in the hope that we'll find a reasonably-priced hotel with hot-water showers and a bathroom in the room (luxuries we couldn't afford here).

In other good news, we have finally found a computer that appears to run fast enough for us to get photos loaded in a reasonable amount of time. Kelly's working on it now, so within an hour or so, we should have lots of photos of our most recent adventures up at http://picasaweb.google.com/jacob.dagger.