Butter chicken, paparazzi and wrestlemania-Delhi style

Its now 5:45 am and I'm sitting in executive AC chair class on a train to jaipur. That sounds fancy and all but it just means there are old school fans attached to the ceiling and the chairs are a bit wider. Indian trains are interesting, they post a paper list on the outside of each carriage of all the passengers names for that car so you have to look for you name on the list. Somehow efficient.

I have been in india for a whole 2 hours now. I landed yesterday at 6:05 am at the Delhi airport. I was happy to be on the ground as we had the WORST turbulance I have ever experienced on a flight, and I've flown through some pretty bad storms before. It was during the morning breakfast service so people were screaming and there was food and drink flying everywherem. I lost my appetite pretty quickly! Annie and Kate were on a flight from Mumbai landing at 8:55 so I headed over to there terminal to wait for them. I didn't sleep a wink on the flight so I was exhausted. We all grabbed a cab together to our hotel, which kate and annie said I was receiving the royal treatment compared to their arrival in mumbai.
We arrived early in the morning and opted for a nap thankfully. After we woke up we headed to moti mahal for lunch, apparently the home of butter chicken...count me in! lunch was tasty, we all ordered and shared...butter chicken, chicken dopiaza, fish tikka, sag paneer and several different naans and rotis...it was a feast. Our waiter wanted to brag and tell us that gordan ramsey had eaten there they have a picture of his visit framed on the wall, which he promptly took off the wall and brought to our table. Annie, being the opportinist that she is, wanted to repeat our cuban kitchen adventure so we took this opportunity to ask for a kitchen tour. They proudly showed off their kitchen to us, let us put of chef hats and stir the butter chicken! Friends were made and many photos were taken!

After lunch and our kitchen tour we walked down to the Red Fort, which proved to be quite the adventure. It should be noted that there is no adequate way to describe driving in India, it is something you truly have to experience to understand. There is no one obeying the lanes ore which side of the road you should be on. It is opportunistic at the least. There are motorcycles with families of four weaving in and out of traffic. I kid you not dad driving, two kids/BABIES wedged between mom on the back riding side-saddle. People walking in the streets between cars as the sidewalks are for street vendors and naps for the homeless and the dogs. Thrown in a thousand rickshaws and a few cows and there you have it. So us walking to the Red Fort was more like a serious game of Paperboy or dodge ball.

We finally arrived at the fort and paid our 250 rupies to get in while locals were charged a mere 10 rupees! Inside was a collection of dilapidated buildings and some nice gardens. Everyone was sitting out in the grass enjoying the sun and each others company. It was mostly indian families and groups of friends. The three of us found a nice spot on a bench and enjoyed some people watching. I can't go further without mentioning the Indian males affection for some serious manlove. They hold hands, drape their arms around one another, lay their heads in each others laps...this is just how they treat their friends, I guess. Anyhow, while watching lots of manlove at the Red Fort it was hard to miss that the three of us quickly became a spectical. It all started with one guy asking if he could take a pic of us. We said sure next thing you know there was a crowd of about 20 men standing around us with their camera phones out taking pictures of us. This lasted about ten minutes, it was quite hilarious!

It was now late afternoona and we could see a mosque in the distance that we wanted to visit, so we started heading towards it. A short cut through a park reaped great rewards as we stumbled across some sort of naked mudwrestling exhibition. We were the only women in a sea of about 200 indian male spectators. It was amazing, there was a drummer thumping out primal beats and boys, aged about 6-18 were wearing tiny underpants, wrestling each other in a giant sand pit. There were popadom vendors walking about and cheeky little kids who vkept inching closer to us. The only white people, yet alone women, in sight.

After a while we decided to move along to the mosque. Well, it seemed we had attracted quite a following Wrestlemania so we weren't alone. We had to walk down a very crowded bazaar to get there which turned into a pretty bad situation quickly. Our gaggle of followers was mostly little boys and a few teens from the wrestling. In the crowded bazaar they started getting brave and started grabbing our rears, which obviously got a rise out of us which clearly egged them on. It got preety out of control, annie socked one of them in the stomach and finally, Kate (a legend) turning around and yelled at them "Come on you want some more, who wants another grab, come on!" They all froze, wide eyed. At this point the shop keepers realized what was happening and started yelling at the boys. It didn't stop them from following us but it did calm down the grabbing. I was very upset at this point and just wanted to get out, it was another run down the gauntlet. I should say that while this was very wrong, it was just boys egging each other on, trying to get a rise out of us. None of the grown men touched us and they came to our aid in the end. But I'll tell you this, I'm not entertaining any little boys after that, once you befriend them even for a second, there is no getting rid of them.

Unfortunately this put a damper on our otherwise great day. We hopped in a rickshaw to make our escape and clearly our driver spoke zero english and had no idea where we were asking to go. So we drove around Delhi for over an hour before we were able to get him to understand, with the help of some other drivers. By this time we were exhausted and hungry. We found a place called Rodeo in connaught square...saddles for bar stools and all. We had a couple of well earned beers and some fajitas then headed back to the hotel for our 5am wake up call.

Now on the train to Jaipur, which is why this blog was so long. Not sure ill have so much time in the future for updates. But I'll try and keep up for the rest of the trip. Until next time, I'll be riding elephants in Jaipur!
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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Device

Testing one. Two.

Hey peeps, just trying to get all of my technology up and running will be trying to email posts to my blog while in India...this is my first try at it! I leave one week from today!!! Everything is in order and bought except the maps...uhhhh...might want to get on that!!
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Anyone out there

I know I have sorely neglected the 3 people who read my blog.  I apologize. New year, new start. Right?  Getting back to blogging was one my list of new years resolutions, but I just put it on the list, right now.  There's no official deadline for resolutions is there?  Anyways, the resolutions that WERE on my list are as follows

1. Learn Spanish - I've had the full set of Spanish Rosetta Stone's sitting in my house for about, oh, 6 months.  They are still in the shrink wrap.  Step 1: Remove from shrink wrap

2. RE-learn how to live on a budget - This is something I used to be very good at.  My parents raised me to be very aware of money and how I was spending it. I've had a job ever since I was 16, much to disliking of a certain college roomie who teased me mercilessly about my "woooooork friends"  aka "juuuuuuulie"  She didn't like sharing me.  I was always afraid of credit cards and rarely used them and always paid them off every month, with the exception of the time I charged an entire cruise for 32 girls on my dad's credit card in college :)  (hey, in my defense, they all wrote me checks to pay me back)  Anyways, somewhere between my first job and my current job, I started earning more money.  I'm usually fine every month and I always put away a bit in savings, but the point is, I could be saving a LOT more if I was just more aware of what I was spending my money on.  Debit card OUT.  Little envelopes filled with cash IN.  At least for a few months so I can see how well I can survive on this purported budget I am putting myself on.

3.  Blog more...see, I just added it!


And on a totally random note...last night I flew back to London from Dallas. I had the aisle seat and a larger man had the window seat.  He wasn't HUGE, just tall and a little bigger.  Well about 2/3 of the way through the 9 hour flight he motioned that he needed to go to the bathroom. So I stood up to let me out. When he stood up he asked if we could switch seats for the last bit of the flight, you know "to change it up a bit"  I was so thrown off guard by his question, I just said "uh, sure, yeah, of course"  in an apologetic tone as if I had been the inconsiderate one sitting in the aisle seat, my ASSIGNED seat, this whole time.  Anyways, I scooted into the window seat and he sat down in my aisle seat stretched his legs out and said "feels better already".  Seriously people, seriously. Who does that!!!!

Crazy Beautiful Life

Warning: This isn't a real post.  Just a filler post to let you know that one day when my life slows down I will post again.  And it will include things such as...

• Me deciding last minute to fly to Bulgaria to train at a high altitude training camp with my boxing gym, Rocky Balboa style.  not kidding.
• Me coming back from Bulgaria to find my flat robbed blind and all the fun that has since ensued.
• Me having to find a new flat asap since the burgler was my upstairs neighbor
• Me boxing a big british broad in front of 500 people in two weeks. what am i thinking
• Me taking a last minute, 36 hour, jaunt over to Copenhagen for the weekend

I'm sure there is plenty more I have left out, but that should keep me busy for a while.  In the mean time I am spending every moment of every waking hour for the next two weeks planning all of the final details for a big work conference I am in charge of that is only a week away (gulp), training at the gym for my fight at least 4 times a week, trying to find a new flat to move to and packing my old flat.  As if I wasn't busy enough...thanks you punk 16 year old that has no respect for other people's property.

All that said, I am still keeping a smile on my face and loving my life!

Boxing Debacle

I'm lazy so this is a cut and paste from my Facebook invite.  Don't worry, if you can't swing the trip to London, I'll make sure there is a video posted on YouTube.

debacle n. A sudden, disastrous collapse, downfall, or defeat; a rout. A total, often ludicrous failure

Mark your calendars.... In a moment lacking any sort of judgement, I have agreed to box in a White Collar Fight night. No friends, you did not just misread that sentence. I have been boxing (for fitness purposes) at Rooney's Boxing Gym for the past 4 months and they have managed to wear me down and convince me to subject myself to what I am sure will be sheer embarrassment for myself and unadulterated pleasure for all of you.

 I will have more details in the next few weeks, but the event will be somewhere in the London Bridge area after work on Sept. 22nd. I think tickets will be around 20-30 quid, let me know if you're in and I'll find out more about tickets.

I'm still working on my "ring" name...any suggestions are welcome ;)

 

I've been working on my "mean" face

 

Fighting Fit Update

If you remember my post from a couple of months ago, you'll know we were doing a Biggest Loser competition at work.  Well the competition has ended and I WON!! I won £620, but even more exciting I lost 6.5% of my body weight, which is a little more than half of my total goal!  I think I could have done even better if I hadn't spent almost 3 weeks in Texas eating Mexican food during part of the competition!  The three biggest contributors to my success were my boxing, my Lose It app on my iPhone and the fact that I didn't "diet". 

I absolutely LOVE my boxing gym! I finally found a work out that I can stick with.  I love how competitive it is and the small "family" feel of the gym keeps me going back 3 times a week.  I will admit, the morning of the final weigh in, I went to the gym for a 7 am work out with Mick and he made me wear a trash bag under my shirt so I would sweat more.  I little gross, but I lost almost 2 lbs (probably just water weight) that morning right before the weigh in!  Oh, and they are also trying to convince me to fight in a real fight at a White Collar Boxing event in September....eek!!!

I am obsessed with the Lose It! app on the iPhone!  It is so easy to track your calories and your goals.  The only bummer is that is is all American restaurants, so I usually just have to find something similar, but it is still really helpful.  One of my biggest problems before, I think, was that I was so confused as to why I had put on weight.  I really didn't think that I ate that bad or that much, but once I started tracking it I was shocked at how badly I was actually eating. It was nice to put it in perspective!  Plus I LOVE adding exercise each day and getting more calories. I have found that I have been walking everywhere a lot more lately just so I can press the add exercise button and get a few extra calories!

As for dieting, I decided not to do it this time.  In the past I have used both Weight Watchers and Atkins to lose weight.  While I was successful in the end goal, I found that neither were sustainable for long periods of time and as soon as I went off of the diet I went right for all of the things I have been deprived of.  This time I just went for reduced calories and exercise.  I didn't deprive myself of anything.  If I wanted a candy bar I had one, I just made sure I exercised that day enough to work it off.  I did cut out drinking during the week, but with this year as one of the best British summers...I couldn't manage to cut myself off on the weekends :) I also started cooking for myself again.  When I moved to my new flat I started eating almost every meal out, since I don't have much in the way of a kitchen.  But really I was just being lazy.  So I am back to cooking my meals for the week on Sundays. 

Everyone asked what I am going to do with my winnings, but since I owed a lot of money to the IRS this year, my macbook got stolen and I JUST smashed my iPhone screen (yesterday, ugh!!) I think the funds are already allocated :/

Summer Reading List

I seem to go through serious phases with reading.  I'll go for several months without picking a book up, when I try I can only get through a page or two before I lose interest...and then one day it will just flip and I'll read incessantly for a few months.  Then it is gone, just as suddenly as it came.  Well I have been OFF the written word here for the past few months in a bad way.  I have 3 books on my nightstand, that I really want to read, but I have only managed to get a few pages into each before I try another one to see if I can get into that one, to no avail.  Last week I met my friend Meg for lunch.  She and I share the same affinity for travel and she took me to this amazing bookstore that is three stories of ONLY travel literature.  It seems that my idea to go travel the world and then write about it has already been done a time or two!  They were having a 'buy 3 for the price of 2' special and before I knew it I was at the checkout counter with SIX books (but for the price of 4!).    It's going to be hard to keep my wanderlust in check with a summer reading list like this......

By examining the true story of Chris McCandless, a young man, who in 1992 walked deep into the Alaskan wilderness and whose SOS note and emaciated corpse were found four months later, internationally bestselling author Jon Krakauer explores the obsession which leads some people to explore the outer limits of self, leave civilization behind and seek enlightenment through solitude and contact with nature. "An astonishingly gifted writer: his account of 'Alex Supertramp' is powerfully dramatic, eliciting sympathy for both the idealistic, anti-consumerist boy - and his parents" - "Guardian". "A compelling tale of tragic idealism" - "The Times".

Ever since Stanley first charted its mighty river in the 1870s, the Congo has epitomised the dark and turbulent history of a failed continent - from colonial cruelty under the Belgians to the kleptocratic chaos of Mobutu Sese Seko and the current post-apocalyptic riot of robber-baron politicians. However, its troubles only served to increase the interest of "Daily Telegraph" correspondent Tim Butcher, who was sent to cover Africa in 2000. He remembered his mother's stories of her own genteel river journey there in the 1950s and his connection deepened when he discovered that Stanley's expedition was funded by the "Telegraph". Before long he became obsessed with the idea of recreating Stanley's original expedition - but travelling alone. Despite warnings from old Africa hands that his plan was 'suicidal', Butcher spent years poring over colonial-era maps and wooing rebel leaders before making his will and venturing to the Congo's eastern border with just a rucksack and a few thousand dollars hidden in his boots. He travelled for hundreds of kilometers on a motorbike, dogged by punctured tyres, broken bridges and dehydration. As he drove through the most dangerous areas, he stopped only to sleep - biking through the bush for hours and speeding up every time he passed a soldier. And then he reached the legendary Congo River, making his way down it in an assortment of vessels including a dugout canoe. Helped along the way by a cast of characters - from UN aid workers to a campaigning pygmy, he passed through the once thriving cities of this huge country, saw the marks left behind by years of abuse and misrule, and followed in the footsteps of the great Victorian adventurers, and of the visitors - such as Katherine Hepburn and Evelyn Waugh - who had been there in very different times. Almost 2,500 harrowing miles later, he reached the Atlantic Ocean a thinner and a wiser man. His extraordinary account describes a country with more past than present, where giant steamboats lie rotting in the advancing forest and children hear stories from their grandfathers of days when cars once drove by. Butcher's journey was a remarkable feat. But the story of the Congo, told expertly and vividly in this book, is more remarkable still.

In 1978, gifted student and writer Greg Roberts turned to heroin when his marriage collapsed, feeding his addiction with a string of robberies. Caught and convicted, he was given a nineteen-year sentence. After two years, he escaped from a maximum- security prison, spending the next ten years on the run as Australia's most wanted man. Hiding in Bombay, he established a medical clinic for slum- dwellers, worked in the Bollywood film industry and served time in the notorious Arthur Road prison. He was recruited by one of the most charismatic branches of the Bombay mafia for whom he worked as a forger, counterfeiter, and smuggler, and fought alongside a unit of mujaheddin guerrilla fighters in Afghanistan. His debut novel, SHANTARAM, is based on this ten-year period of his life in Bombay. The result is an epic tale of slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison torture, mafia gang wars and Bollywood films. A gripping adventure story, SHANTARAM is also a superbly written meditation on good and evil and an authentic evocation of Bombay life.

Paul Theroux sets off for Cape Town from Cairo -- the hard way. Travelling across bush and desert, down rivers and across lakes, and through country after country, Theroux visits some of the most beautiful landscapes on earth, and some of the most dangerous. It is a journey of discovery and of rediscovery -- of the unknown and the unexpected, but also of people and places he knew as a young and optimistic teacher forty years before. Safari in Swahili simply means "journey", and this is the ultimate safari. It is Theroux in his element -- a trip where chance encounter is everything, where departure and arrival times are an irrelevance, and where contentment can be found balancing on the top of a truck in the middle of nowhere.

Meet Balram Halwai, the 'White Tiger': servant, philosopher, entrepreneur and murderer. Balram, the White Tiger, was born in a backwater village on the River Ganges, the son of a rickshaw-puller. He works in a teashop, crushing coal and wiping tables, but nurses a dream of escape. When he learns that a rich village landlord needs a chauffeur, he takes his opportunity, and is soon on his way to Delhi behind the wheel of a Honda. Amid the cockroaches and call-centres, the 36,000,004 gods, the slums, the shopping malls, and the crippling traffic jams, Balram learns of a new morality at the heart of a new India. Driven by desire to better himself, he comes to see how the Tiger might escape his cage...

'Here we drink three cups of tea to do business; the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything - even die' - Haji Ali, Korphe Village Chief, Karakoram mountains, Pakistan. In 1993, after a terrifying and disastrous attempt to climb K2, a mountaineer called Greg Mortenson drifted, cold and dehydrated, into an impoverished Pakistan village in the Karakoram Mountains. Moved by the inhabitants' kindness, he promised to return and build a school. "Three Cups of Tea" is the story of that promise and its extraordinary outcome. Over the next decade Mortenson built not just one but fifty-five schools - especially for girls - in remote villages across the forbidding and breathtaking landscape of Pakistan and Afghanistan, just as the Taliban rose to power. His story is at once a riveting adventure and a testament to the power of the humanitarian spirit.

The last book I have read before, several years ago on a work trip to Chicago.  I cried the whole flight home while I was finishing the book.  It is, and will always remain, my favorite book.  It is awe inspiring the impact one person can have on the world, even when they just set out to repay one village for a kind deed.  If you read only one book, let this be the one, the world will be a better place if you do! 

Oh and here are the three on my nightstand that I still have to get through....

We all want to help. Over the past fifty years $1 trillion of aid has flowed from Western governments to Africa, with rock stars and actors campaigning for more. But this has not helped Africa. It has ruined it. Dambisa Moyo’s excoriating and controversial book reveals why millions are actually poorer because of aid, unable to escape corruption and reduced, in the West’s eyes, to a childlike state of beggary. Dead Aid shows us another way. Using hard evidence to illustrate her case, Moyo shows how, with access to capital and with the right policies, even the poorest nations can turn themselves around. First we must destroy the myth that aid works– and make charity history.

Do you believe in miracles? This collection of extraordinary tales of survival is guaranteed to astound and inspire you in equal measure. Meet ordinary people who have found extraordinary strengths facing seemingly impossible challenges – like the woman who fell from the sky, or the man who floated 300 miles out to sea after the Asian tsunami. What is it about some people that they seem born survivors, or how does someone find the incredible strength from within not to give up on hope against all odds? Are some people just lucky? These and many other true stories demonstrate the strength we all possess to come through our life's toughest challenges, and the precious wisdom that results from surviving. This book is based primarily on conversations with survivors and experts around the world

The Poisonwood Bible tells the story of an American family in the Congo during a time of tremendous political and social upheaval. The story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them all they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it - from garden seeds to Scripture - is calamitously transformed on African soil. This tale of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction, over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa, is set against one of history's most dramatic political parables. The Poisonwood Bible dances between the darkly comic human failings and inspiring poetic justices of our times. In a compelling exploration of religion, conscience, imperialist arrogance, and the many paths to redemption, Barbara Kingsolver has written a novel of overwhelming power and passion

I'm off to read....