Delhi to Chandigarh

So I flew into Delhi and arrived at around 10 pm. It took a bit to find exactly where Valerie was staying, and it was late, so we pretty much went right to bed. It was Diwali day, so they were shooting of so many crackers the whole city was smoky!

I took an auto early to the main New Delhi railroad station. My train, the Kalka Shabti, left at 7:40. There are 16 platforms and I had to pass them all to get to #2, but the train was really nice, an A/Ccoach. Although it took me forever to find the right seat. I sat in the wrong one like 4 times. It took about 4 hours to get to Chandigarh, but I could even use my internet from the train! Harpreet’s brother, Sunny, who he lives with in Mumbai picked me up in an auto b/c Harpreet had gone with his parents to meet a potential wife.

His brother was really nice, and took me to their row house in Mohali, a suburb to the south of Chandigarh. His twin brother, Hunny, was there too, so we talked for a bit, and then I took a bath, and we all took a nap while we waited for them to get back. They fixed me some great paratha and eggs for breakfast. They got back and we chatted for awhile, they showed me his dad’s little garden in front of the house – lots of potted plants that would be just house plants at home. In the evening we took an auto to sector 17, the city center with all the commercial. There were so many people it was amazing! It was so vibrant, even though many of the shops were closed – so unlike Gandhinagar. He showed me the oldest movie theater, obviously a Corbu design, which they were threatening to tear down a replace with a mall. And we went to the oldest coffee show there form 1957 which started as a coffee co-op. All the shops were really high-end foreign brands, and it’s amazing to see how many cars there were parked there. In Ahmedabad it would be only motorcyles. I hadn’t seen that many cars since leaving the US.