Day 1 in New Delhi

It's been an interesting day. Nothing particularly eye opening, although after being prepped by everyone about how shocking the conditions are, I have spent the entire day in the office and not seen much up close.

I arrived on the plane from Boston (with a 7 hour stopover in Frankfurt) early this morning, about 2am. My first impression? Delhi smells like matches. It's the sulfur in the air or something.

The drive to work was interesting, but not too crazy. There were lots of people on the sides of the roads, some driving, some walking, some biking. The construction of buildings looks strange too. Everyone has these branches as scaffolding. it doesn't look that safe - although I'm sure it works fine. I'm going to try and get a photo on the way home tonight. There is no blue sky here, it's constantly white, I assume from pollution. I'm interested to see if it's the same out at the Taj Mahal.

I'm apparently going to work from about 10 until about 8pm at night, for the only reason that if you leave earlier you'll be stuck in traffic for an hour. Everyone seems to have the same schedule. The office is nice though. It's on the 9th floor, and I enjoy looking out at the houses around it - I wouldn't call them slums - although I wouldn't call it nice either. There are lots of bodies and people walking around doing stuff. There are a group of about 5-6 people digging a HUGE trench outside by hand. Next to them are these large 2-3 meter congrete pipes. I wonder if they will install them by hand too (or get in a crane).

For lunch we all had buffet indian food which is delivered to the office each day. It cost 45 rupies, which is about $1US. It was pretty good. I'm waiting to see now if I get "Delhi-Belly"...

Ironically through all of this, today is my 6th year aniversary of arriving in the states. And I'm in India.