It had three acts - the Intrepid tour of timeless India, the shock of the new in Gurgaon, and then a mingling of the two in a strong religious broth in Rajasthan - and a pleasant coda: lovely to have a final weekend just chillin' with my old friend and his family. Feeling anew, indeed, after many years' separation, like the old dear friends we are. 
I've started going through photos. Well, I've been weeding them out all along with an effort at ruthlessness, and Delhi - Agra - Chanderi - Orchha - Khajuraho - Panna - Chitrakoot - Allahabad - Varanasi - Gurgaon - Jaipur - Amber - Ajmer - Pushkar - Samode 
in 1000 shots seems not so bad - if still somewhat unwieldy I grant you.Today I'm just posting six photos from my very first days here, in and around Delhi. (Unusually for me, they all have people in them.) Since I can't move pictures around or interleave them with text from this computer, this list of descriptions will have to do (remember that each can be enlarged by clicking on it):
(1) schoolgirls coming out of the vast bazaar entry of the Red Fort
(2) a security guard who tried to mess up my picture inside the Fort but ended up completing it
(3) an Indian woman taking a picture for (or perhaps of) tourists at Humayun's Tomb, the predecessor monument to the Taj Mahal
(4) an Indian tourist marveling at a ceiling at Qutb Minar (I love this picture)
(5) a manual laborer enjoying the Sunday calm on an Old Delhi street usually thronged with book buyers
(6) guys awaiting a bus before a billboard commemorating one hundred years of Satyagraha (notice the Gandhi symbols - the cartoon outline from behind and the glasses)
More to come!It's a little strange to be posting these pictures of my first Delhi impressions as I leave, I suppose. Or maybe not: those schoolgirls were coming out just as I was going in. It is in any case a pleasure to look back on these pictures (especially the ones with people in them), and find them already fond and familiar memories. This India feels like a place one could spend more time. And probably should. And very likely will!
