Through the fog...

January 20th

We left Agra today – it was a cold and very foggy morning. The road was foggy – I tried not to pay too much attention. It was almost like driving at night – things came out of the fog from nowhere.

It was not too far of a drive back to Delhi – but the fog slowed us down a bit, I think. Hukam and Kumal stopped at a special sweets shop to buy cakes – Hukam was wanting to get back home. They both were. It had been a long trip, and they both had to leave their families behind for a while. It was a fairly uneventful drive. I listened to some Allen Ginsberg poetry readings on the way, and it seemed fitting, considering the eerie feeling of the fog, and the snippets of India that came and went past our window.

We got into Delhi in the late afternoon. We stayed at the same hotel as when we first arrived – the Hotel Apra. It’s funny how much my perception has changed since our circle ‘round Rajisthan. When we stayed in Delhi the first night – I was happy to have a room, but it seemed dirty, and scary – the neighborhood seemed sketchy. And it may be, but upon our return, the hotel seemed really clean, and the streets not as filled with trash. The cars didn’t seem to honk as much – in fact, I didn’t hear them at all in the night. We even went out shopping with the ladies, and had a good experience wandering the streets with the rest of the shoppers (and armed guards…).

We took the ladies out to dinner, as it was our last night together. Mary was off home tomorrow; Sandy off to Varanasi and beyond...