I went to India as part of a program I am in at school. I took the wife, it was her first trip outside the US <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />. She hung tough and did awesome.
We had a layover in Doha, Qatar which was a bit wierd being the only non-locals in the airport.
We went to Hyderabad, Agra and Delhi on the trip. We went to the Hyderabad zoo which was cool. We walked by the tiger and elephant pens and took some pictures. One our way back to the car I noticed that there was a little girl, maybe 7 or 8, standing on the top of the moat inside the tiger pen. I showed the zoo worker and started walking over there and he blew his whistle for her to get out and she did. The fence was knocked down around some of the animal pens, the tiger pen being one of them. Everyone looked at me as if I overreacted. Call me crazy.
There was a bit of local political drama in Hyderabad that got the juices flowing a bit, but we were able to leave the hotel without incident. A group decided to make an attempt in the life of a local political/religious figure. His follwers decided to riot and block the street in front of our hotel.
The next day after moving hotels and going to Delhi, the Osama news hit so that made the trip a bit more interesting. Suffice it to say that Americans were not exactly in favor in certain neighborhoods after this incident and I don't exactly blend in <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />.
Even though I was in class much of the time, we did get to take in some local sites like the Taj Mahal. Because of the Osama situation, we ended up hiring a private driver to visit various sites in small groups as opposed to renting a bus and going as a class.
All in all, India reminded me alot of Mexico City or Guadalajara, but poorer and on a larger scale. There are 1.03 billion people in India and most of these folks don't have much. This translates to squatting on a truck bed size piece of land and living under a tarp. Littering is what people do, alot of trash and festering water holes everywhere. Dogs, pigs, monkeys and cows pretty much cruise around at will and are just part of society. Traffic lanes, red lights and driving laws are not followed, yet people get from point A to point B without any tempers flaring. I saw a guy on a motorcyle pinned between to cars that had a head on collision. He was the only guy I saw pissed off about the traffic situation. Wonder why?
All in all, I found the people of India to be good folks. I made an effort to communicate with some of the locals in smaller towns and everyone I made contact with was cordial and respectful.
I did my darndest to find some local knives, but short of the butchers knives in small shops, I did not see any. One cop I saw had a pvc pipe that looked to be filled with concrete with some duct tape on the end. I did "communicate" briefly with a soldier at the parliment building in Delhi. I thought he was asking me something, but after a minute I figured out that he was telling me to get the hell away from the area I was in. It was not marked no entry, but I don't speak Hindi and he did not speak English, so he gave me a sign the International sign for beat it by bringing his rifle around from work carry. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />
We finished up the trip by spending a day and half in London, the half way point back to the US. My wife liked London, of course. Of all the people standing in line for "The Eye" (ferris wheel in London), security asked me if I had a knife or a "sharpie" on me. Who, me?
An interesting trip indeed. All I had was my little point and shoot, but here are some pics of India and London
http://s4.photobucket.com/albums/y111/clive12/India%20London%20Trip/?start=all.
