Do you like it there so far,Greg?
Anything interesting happened in the meantime?
Not to diss my many Asian friends, but having been prior in Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, etc., much of Asia was the kind of place that was nice to see once -- but not necessarily to come back to.
I don't know what it is about India. Maybe it's the more liberal and diverse society here. Maybe some of it's the food. Maybe it's the people. But I am really digging it here. India has to be my favorite Asian nation I've visited by far. I would absolutely come back here even after my couple of weeks in Delhi.
Sure, it's got its crazy side... a lot of impoverished people,
scugnizzi in the city streets that would put a clinic on their chump counterparts in Napoli, electrical and water infrastructure that's ridiculously behind demand, insane heat in May that makes you feel like your head is in a Tandoori oven, and some of the craziest transportation the world over. I mean, on that last point you've got bicycles, motorcycles, cars, trucks, packed buses, auto rickshaws, horse-pulled rickshaws, three-wheeled bicycle rickshaws... and cows. And you put them all on city streets with virtually no rules of the road -- it's like watching the friggin'
Wacky Races on any street in town.
Still, I've really felt at home here. There are so many eye-openers, but it's a rich tapestry of them. Perhaps one of the few Asian countries I could see living in for a while.
As for anything interesting that's happened, there's been no singular thing. Just a string of events -- like randomly meeting a 73-year-old native of Delhi who used to work in high fashion and gave us a tour of his favorite temples, or having no idea I would be dropping a couple grand (or call it "lakhs" in Desi-speak

) on a Kashmiri silk carpet because I couldn't stop being wowed by the damn things, or...