Dalama Adventures Tale of two corporate types ditching their jobs and traveling the world for 14 months... check out all photos, blogs & interesting tid bits at http://www.dalama.net

The streets come alive and are crawling with activity.  We're staying in a local neighborhood of Karol Baugh, northeast of the city center.  People hurry to their street jobs; rack of clothing are set up on the streets like a Nordstrom sale, advertising todays specials.  It's actually more like Costco - racks of tons of clothes at blowout discount prices - tables upon tables of underwear displayed in bins, fading tin the sun.  A small boy sets down his water buckets to pay tribute to the Hindu shrine, bowing his head to the ground, touching the ground, his forehead, face, and chest in a line.  A man sells stationery and envelopes down the middle of the street, hoping is arms don't let any plastic wrapped packages fall through to the ground.  A veggie-wallah cruises through the streets on a  bike, chanting in a mono-tone voice, a repetitive phrase of three words, announcing his goods to the people surrounding him.  We are approached by several rickshaw drivers and Darrin seeks to negotiate a late morning right to the Connaught District.  Most real businesses (those in offices like internet cafes) don't open until 10"30 or 11:00 a.m.  He finally agrees with a guy named Rocky, who leaves us his business card, and confirms a 10:30 pickup at our hotel.  We sip really bad coffee and chai at the "Nescafe" coffee shop.  Good coffee in Indian cities has been really difficult to find.  Most of it is instant crap, made from powdered Nescafe, and comes with way too much water, sugar and often a flick of chocolate.  More like watery sugar, with globs of powdered milk stuck to the bottom of the tiny "mug."  It's 35 degrees celsius at 8:00 a.m. and we're keen to find a place to kick it today, with A/C and internet.  Anything to get away from our nasty hole of a hotel room with no windows, and A/C that isn't working properly.  

Rocky fails to show, but we find another guy claiming to be his elder brother - looks more like his father, so we whisk away downtown, our hair blowing in the hot, polluted air, feeling and hearing the energy of rush hour traffic from the fine comforts of an auto-rickshaw, dodging in and out of cars and other road obstacles.  Auto-rickshaw are also fondly referred to as cockroaches, as from above, the literally look like millions of cockroaches on the roadways, cruising and zigzagging their way around anything in front of them, squeezing through the smallest, unimaginable spots, sliding through cracks in the traffic quickly, unscathed.  We manage to kill a couple of hours in an internet sweat shop, and get the website fixed up and running.  We then ventured to the underground bazaar, which was indeed a bizarre experience.  4-5 circular rings of shops in a hazy basement, salesmen on us like flies on dog poo- yet another overwhelming India experience.  From electronic gadgets to jewelry, shoes and clothes, you can get it all down under, and for a very cheap price, my friend.  30 minutes was plenty for us in the underworld, but finding our way up to the air hole was another task in itself.  We emerge, circling the outdoor rings of shops, hunting for cheap copies of books to load up on for the next leg of our trip.  India is the place to buy books; hundreds of book-wallahs line the streets, laying out their bootleg copies, and fanning incense over the goods, in a luck ritual to bless their business for the day.  I bought a couple of books from book-wallahs (sorry to say I've contributed to the bootleg business here) - Shantaram which seems to be most popular with travelers here in India as well as Nepal, and "The Monk who Sold His Ferrari.  If anyone is looking for a great book to truly experience street life in India, Shataram is the pick, very well written, and describes it all to a "T."  We slipped into an air conditioned North Indian restaurant for lunch and chilled for another hour, finally making it back to our nasty hotel.  We had a quick dinner at a local restaurant, dining on our all time favorite Haryali Kebabs (chicken kebab's marinated in a minty yogurt, cooked in the tandoor), paratta and naan, spending the very last of our rupees, and called it an early night, as our lift to the airport would be approaching quickly at 4:30 am.