Welcome to Delhi

For the first time in 8 months I am finally warm. We exited the airport around 11pm last night into 35 degree weather, not too hot, just right. The flight was uneventful although all the airport employees were wearing masks, strange to see after only watching it on the news. The hotel sent me a pickup and I wasn't too sure I was going to get there after I jumped in the back seat and the front seat immediately fell off into my lap. But 5 minutes later everything was fixed and the taxi stopped stalling.

Everyone says India is overwhelming and takes a few days to get used to the craziness of it all, but last night the roads were pretty empty and the neighbourhood I'm staying in was quiet when we arrived. Apparently cows are banned from most of the city but I guess they didn't get the news here as there seems to be one cow for every two tourists. The traffic is the same as the Middle East which means you go when there's a gap in the vehicles and hustle before you get pegged. It's loud and dirty and it takes a bit of steel to not feel rotten for ignoring every person who wants to talk to you or not handing money to every street kid who sticks his hand in your face. So far I've had two tag-alongs, one guy who was quite nice but disappeared after a cop pulled him aside, and the other was a young girl whose face was badly scarred from burns.

I'm exhausted after two days of traveling to get here and maybe 6 hours sleep through all of it. Spent a few hours walking around after finishing my first order of business which was to fix my glasses which I sat on on the plane and broke. Within 20 minutes I'd found a shop and got new frames, can you do that at home? May leave for Varanasi tomorrow if I can pull myself together and brave the train station. I saw enough of Delhi last time and don't need to do more. Why does 40 degrees feel ok?