Delhi layover

I arrived late last night into Delhi for my day-long layover. This morning, I headed down to breakfast and remembered why I am so excited to be traveling in India - comfort food is everywhere!!!

I managed to knock myself out with an ambien and a sucker-punch of exhaustion (I did sleep eight hours on the plane...) The pairing of this rest, plus a mound of idli and smothered in sambar for breakfast, have eased the jet lag far more than I anticipated.

Of interesting current events, the Olympic torch was running through Delhi today. Tibetan protestors were apparently staging a parallel "protest" run. I would have liked to have stayed to see and photograph the protests, but unfortunately I had a flight to catch. As I also missed the torch in SF due to last minute 're-routing,' I suppose it's only fair that I 'just miss' the run in Delhi, as well.

On a literary note, before I left, Sharmila mailed me the book "The Climb" by Boukreev and DeWalt. (Thanks Sharmila!) The storytelling is great, but I find myself unexpectedly chuckling at periodic descriptions and phrases such as "Russian High Altitude Mountaineering School" which is the sort of thing I imagine Nick attended when he was 13, but just never told anyone as it may still be "top-secret."

Another fantastic term used in the book is "samochuvsvie" a 'Russian concept for an impression of a person's state of being, the combined and observable aspects of a person's mental, physical, and emotional state.' This concept of needing to monitor your partner for telltale signs of nausea, headaches, etc., forces me to draw some parallels between mountaineering and dating...

I leave in a few hours to catch my flight to Kathmandu and hope to have frequent internet availability in addition to stories beyond the cool books I am reading...