India, Day 8

I promised you a cow. You know, I won't be eating them for a while. It's just not right. Well, I might have eaten some of them today. More on that later.

It wasn't just one, either. There are at least three cows in India. I saw one chewing on a newspaper from a garbage pile. Some are employed as roadside landscapers.

In the morning, we got into Mr. Singh's car for the considerable drive back to Delhi. The road is farms and truck stops across the semi-arid landscape.

Unlike in Agra, these cows have impressive horns.

At the halfway point, we stopped at a roadside hotel with an attached café. The owner (the man was, as I later found out) has a family member in tech at Morgan Stanley, and his son is studying "big data" in Kerala. Andrea had chai and I had black coffee. She got some chocolate covered vanilla wafers, and after my thinly guised entreat, she gave me half of them.

I'm listening to Blind Lemon Jefferson's recording of "Black Snake Moan." It nearly fits the mood of the sleepy highway outpost, with its neglected playground and bovine passers-by. It seemed that Mr. Singh has a longstanding working relationship with the owner. On the one hand, the professionals we met on our tour have done this a million times and know what gets a good response from us the customers. On the other hand, I sometimes thought we were a resource being passed through a quiet network of receivers.

We got back to Delhi just in time, as my bladder was about to explode. They gave us a room with two beds. They had guilty looks on their faces and upgraded us to a larger room, with a refrigerator. Serves them right. Finally somewhere to put the cheap champagne that Mr. Singh gifted us.

It's not really champagne in any sense of the word. It's twelve percent alcohol by volume, is probably derived from grapes, and contains carbon dioxide, but aside from these things it more resembles fortified Kool-Aid. I will drink it.

At 4:30 we were back in the car on our way to a walking tour of Old Delhi's street foods. Our guide was an adorable college student from Bangladesh or a nearby Indian territory. She's studying creative writing. She said that among the three languages in which she's fluent, English is "the best." She prefers to travel alone around northern India, because she tours so fast and rough that she has yet to find somebody who can hang with her.

We ate a lot of food. Andrea and I skipped lunch, but it didn't seem to help.

I'm not moved by food. That's not to say I don't enjoy good food, which it all was. It's just that I have trouble focusing on food.

That being said, we sampled quite the spread as we squeezed through the crowded streets of Old Delhi, sometimes hopping on a rickshaw to reach another neighborhood. We had:

aloo tikki from a street vendor,
nankhatai from another street vendor ("like shortbread, but better"),
paratha with breakfast sides in casual open air joint that has been owned by the same family for six generations,
samosas from a street vendor,
jalebi, which looks like poop but is quite delicious,
kheer eaten from a clay crucible,
masala chai in a paper cup, enjoyed at our guide's favorite spot, where people come to gather around simple tables, drink tea, and talk about politics. She told us how to make the tea, and when I contrasted it with how I typically prepare chai, she said "that sounds bland."
seekh kebab and some other meat preparation in the Muslim part of town. I noticed that the number of people wearing hats increased as we crossed the cultural divide. This place was simply decorated and well lit by florescent lights. There were two air conditioners in the back where we were sitting. Andrea said that it looked like the kind of place you'd end up at late after a night of drinking. It did remind me of an open-until-three-in-the-morning-for-muslim-cab-drivers halal chicken place in my neighborhood.
butter chicken from the roof of a densely packed five story chicken emporium. We climbed climbed climbed through the squished crowds of people until we reached the charcoal illuminated top of the building where the chicken is cooked. There was a good view of the surrounding area, but I didn't manage a good photo.
kulfi in a space that felt more like a waiting room in a realtor's office than an ice cream shop. Andrea liked the fruit flavors, whereas I think I preferred the nuts.

We began with another Sikh temple, and along the way there was a quiet street of Jain households. After kulfi we rickshawed back to the car, where our guide seemed oddly interested in keeping far away from our driver.

So ended the street food walking tour.

On the way back, we stopped to get some cash for tipping Mr. Singh, as it would be our last drive with him.

Thanks for the jungle juice.