I am sorry I haven’t written in so long. The last two weeks have been a bit crazy. Sarah was scheduled to arrive on February 7^th, and we had our plans all set. We were going to go to Pushkar and Udaipur in Rajasthan, and then head north to Amritsar, McLeod Ganj and Mussoorie. Our plans were changed due to problems with Sarah’s visa.
Usually the Indian Consulate gives visas the same day they are applied for, but because Sarah was applying in Germany, and was not German they said they needed three business days. This, combined with problems getting seats on a later flight, meant that she ended up arriving a week late.
After the initial panic and disappointment wore off, I was left with a week with nothing planned. I was staying at my friend Mark’s apartment in Delhi, but he had left town, so I decided to head up to Mussoorie and spend the time with people I knew. So I cancelled our Rajasthan trip, and booked a ticket for Dehradun. It was interesting retracing my steps after so much time in India. The last time I had taken the trip, I was still a bit dazed and confused. Now I knew my way around and felt confident.
Mussoorie was very cold, and I decided to stay at a hotel down in the town rather than up at Devdar Woods, which is 1000 feet higher (and where there was still snow on the ground). This made it easy to visit my friends, and take a Hindi lesson from one of my old teachers. I had a very quiet week, and then headed back to Delhi to meet Sarah.
On the morning Sarah arrived, I hired a taxi and headed to the airport. Sarah’s re-routed trip brought her first to Mumbai, and then by Air India to Delhi. So, I directed the driver to the domestic airport. When we arrived there, I discovered that Air India lands at the international airport, so I jumped back in the taxi and we sped off. I still managed to make it to the airport a few minutes before Sarah’s flight landed. I waited about fifteen minutes watching strangers wander past. Then she appeard in the crowd. It was such a relief to see her: after the disappointment the previous week, I wasn’t letting myself believe that she was really coming.
We spent the next two days zipping around Delhi to see monuments and to do some shopping. I have to say that she held up much better than I did in my first two days in Delhi. We wandered the back streets of some of the busiest Bazaars in the city, ate at little roadside Dhabas, and got to know each other again.
More soon, I promise…