Leaving on a..well 6 Jet Planes

Bangkok to Delhi. 2 days later, Delhi to Tel Aviv. 15 hours later, Tel Aviv to New York City. Stops in Istanbul and Zurich. I don’t normally drink coffee, but let’s just say I’d be nose deep in the keyboard otherwise right now.

I spent a wonderful last day seeing some last minute sights in Delhi yesterday. I met an outgoing 14 year old kid with good English named Raj who showed me some local stores for my last minute souvenirs shopping. I have been quite resistant to give money to touts, but it was my last day, and Raj and I spent a couple hours walking around town. I bought him lunch and we talked about family, Delhi and Obama. Naturally and ultimately he did ask me for money at the end, and hard as it always is, I had to walk away. That will never get easier.

I’m back in Tel Aviv. I met up with my friend Ben, the soldier whom I roomed with during my Birthright trip. He invited me to his apartment meet his parents over an informal shabbat dinner. NYC in less than 24 hours……..

Of Car Horns, Elephants and Tuk-Tuk

One of my posts from last summer addressed Costa Rica’s use of car horns as “more of a wave than a middle finger.” India is a whole different story. Many of the Tuk-Tuk (motorized rickshaws) and trucks in the country paint on their back bumper “horn please.” Turn signals are unused, lanes non-existant and traffic police…wait…there’s traffic police? The streets are noisy, crowded and congested with every type of vehicle you can imagine. In bumper-to-bumper traffic yesterday we even inched past an elephant on a main-highway in Delhi.