India Day 2

After a good night's sleep we ate a nice ig breakfast and got ready to
take the bus to Aga. WE decided to take the local buses which ended
up no the best way to spend day 2 in india.


|We went to the bus station in lp and they said there are no buses to
agra. so se went to the police office to make sure that was true. The
cop told us how to get to the other bus station where there are to
Agra. We then took a 40 min bus withing Delhi to the southern part,
this bus station was surrounded bytrees and across the street was a
shopping mall.

THE ATTACK OF THE MONKEYS
When we entered the station I had bananas hanging from my waist strap.
And all of a sudden a monkey jumped out of nowhere next to me.
Shoot! We walked a lil faster and it went away But we decided to give
it one. But o no, that wasn't enough for them. They started following
us for real. So we had to give them the whole bag.. it was a real
stick up! So we went away cracking up cuz we were mugged by monkeys!

Back to the bus fiasco... this station didn't actually have buses to
agra... we were told to cross the street and go near the shopping
mall. At this point it was raining and the ground was all mud
puddles... We ask one guy Agra.. he says no.. after about 20 people
saying no.. someone finally says yes... and he explains by showing us
on the map.. that it goes to aligarh and then we change bus to
agra... but this isn't on the main highway... rather on local roads...
yippy... we take a bit to decide... we could wait another night and
take a 2 hour train the next day.. or we could just do it... we decide
to take the bus..

In the bus, a nice guy from a place between delhi and aligarh talked
with us... even til now.. 3 days later, he is the only indian we have
had a real conversation with... he taught us some hindi and we let him
listen to some salsa... We talked about our families and he told us
about his girlfriend.. who he fell in love with and then they're
parents agreed to their marraige... so they call this a love arranged
marraige.. he seems to be lucky for an Indian. if your parents don't
agree, too bad for you.. you'll get married to a stranger...

As we were going bythe green fields and cows, and sweeping aby the
barely cleared oncoming traffic, we started noticin these lil huts on
the side of the road. They were made out of circular disks stacked on
each other with thatch roofs, very unstable looking. Later, I
realized they were cow patties (cow poo). Near them there were lil
balls of cow dung drying in the sun... aw so sweet... and there were
women with pans of dung on their heads walking toward the houses...i
can only gues they did this to help the dung decompose faster for
fertilizing... i dunno... the things you learn by looking out the
window!

we also saw the occasional roadkill, of dogs or goats. even in the
middle of towns.. no one paid them any mind. Ah another fun thing is
that the cars are one of 2 types... either lil daewoo mini cars.. like
a qq or a chevy spark... or vintage 50s comebacks.. well they didn-t
have to comeback.. they've just been here since the 50s... i can't
imagine how much an american would pay for one of these babies...

so there's the end of the good things of the day... on the
delhi-aligarh bus all was good... when we changed buses things went
downhill...The bus should have taken 2.5 hours... 86 km... we covered
km86 to 26 in about 2 hours.. but then the bus totally stopped. So
from 8-8:30 we were in one place.. then moved 6 km more... then it was
over... we were wedged between tractors of potatoes but the drivers
were nowhere to be found. where the helll were they? we had no clue.

Now here's something else that happened on this bus... At the
beginning the bus was full so we were in a 3 seat side... withour bags
on our laps... and someone was next to me.. no problem... later some
people got off the bus... and there were empty seats all around us...
we had already been 6 hours with our bags on our laps... so i decided
to ask the person next to me if he would mind moving to an empty seat.
But he unexpectedly acted like he didn't hear me... and started
talking in Hindi to the people around him. and making a big deal out
of it. so i said ok whateve... I was going to sit down, and someone
stood up and asked if i need some help in English...i said i think the
man understood, but didn't want to so that's alright... but whatever
they kept making a big thing about and after a bit some people
convinced him to move... we sai next to our ags for 2 minutes.. then
they were making such a fuss we just put the bags on our laps again...
and left the space open for someone to sit... for about 20 minutes
they continued to talk about us and look at us... it was really tense,
and all for what? i didn't understand the big deal, but also we
didn't want to make any problem... so i tried not to look at them and
started singing... chinese, english, spanish... anything! We had come
across the same thing in china many times, and if i asked they were
always willing and most of the time i didn't even haveto ask they just
did it as a favor automatically...