Nearly journey's end

I flew into Delhi this morning from Udaipur, got a hotel in the Paharganj section, which is not great.  Oh well, live and learn.  I have been traveling light this entire trip, and now I have an extra bag, filled with stuff I've bought to bring home.  That really affects my flexibility.  When I got to the hotel I had picked sort of randomly from the guide book, it was not great, but I was not willing to hoist that extra bag around looking for something else.  So there you have it.  I read someplace recently that the enjoyment of travel functions in inverse proportion to the amount of baggage one has.   I know I"ve loved having a small pack and daybag and being able to walk comfortably as long as needed with them. 

I'm going to Pete and Solvi's house for dinner tonight (Paula's brother and sister-in-law-Paula is my brother Clay's wife).  I wish I had a gift to bring but what could they possibly want from here that they don't already have?!  So I am afraid I go emptyhanded.

Had lunch at the Club India, doesn't that sound interesting?  Well, it wasn't really.  This section of Delhi is full of touts and filth.  Every few seconds as I walked down the street, someone wanted to walk along and chat, but of course they really wanted to sell something.  I have resorted to ignoring them or being downright rude.  I told one guy today that I just wanted to walk by myself and turned and went in another direction. 

But then I went down another street and suddenly the touts were gone, just regular folks living their lives.  I ended up in what I'll call the upholstered furniture section-lots of blocks of foam, fabrics, men sewing and gluing, then on the other side of the street, men stripping and refinishing some dining chairs.  Then I went down an alley that smelled very ripe, the source of which turned out to be a HUGE compost pile of rotting food plus other things, I'm sure.  Shacks made of wood scraps and old, torn and dirty fabric, people living as basic as it gets.

I'm off to clean up for dinner.  I don't know if I'll post anything tomorrow, so you may not see anything until I get home.  The funny thing is I leave Delhi tomorrow at 2 pm and get to SF at 6:30 or so the same day, just 4 1/2 hrs later by the clock, but I'm doing the time travel thing, and will be flying to Taipai ( 4-5 hrs) and then to SF (11-12 hrs).  No doubt I'll be fresh and perky by the time I get home, but I'll try to post something just to say I made it safely.