After journeying to five continents, I’ve realized I have a love/hate relationship with travelling abroad.

On one hand, I enjoy most international cuisine and generally stuffing my face as often as I can legally get away with.

I also feel the need to visit all the wonders of the world. I guess I’ve started my bucket list early.

However, as soon as I land in a foreign country, I’m instantly homesick.

I want my own bed (those dark splotches on the sheets should be my OWN stains)

I want my own toilet (and more than 5 available squares of toilet paper)

I want to easily navigate (in English) around a locale and not have to negotiate with the rickshaw for 10 minutes and then end up getting ripped off anyways just to go 6 blocks.

But that’s all part of travelling.

Joy.

My flight to India was pleasant enough.

Except for this overweight Indian man who emitted this wet snort every few minutes. Delicious.

When I arrived, the taxi waiting for me had to wait for some other folks on our tour.

We waited at the stuffy, moist airport for TWO HOURS!

I was annoyed, smelly, hungry and exhausted.
Finally, the guy said we could go to the hotel.

We begin driving and about 20 minutes into it, he gets a call on his cell phone that the passengers had arrived and we have to go back and pick them up!!

Excuse me?? I have to wait 2 hours for them and they can’t wait 30 minutes for me to get dropped off first?

I instantly hate the quiet, older Australian couple that pile in my taxi, making me sit up when I’ve been laying down in the backseat semi-comfortably.

They will pay. (with diarrhea, but that’s later in the trip)

Instead of seeking revenge, I end up joining them the next day for a day long sightseeing tour of Delhi.

Seeing things that our tour did not include. But first, breakfast.

Tony, Jeanette and I hire a driver for the day to take us to about 6 sights (with no stops for lunch – are these people insane?? They did weight about 75 pounds between the two of them)

We visit the Lodi Gardens, where we encounter attacking Eagles!! They’re actually called Kites, but they look just like them. Their wingspan is enormous and I could feel the whooshing as they swooped over my head to torment some cracked out dog.

We visited the Lotus Temple, it’s very large place of worship for the Ba’Hai faith and we heard it’s boring inside, so we just snapped a few photos.

We drive by the Red Fort, have no interest in going inside and snap some exterior photos. We must have known we’d see plenty of Forts on our tour.

We drive up to the gate of the President’s house and see some monkeys frolicking.

Finally, we visit Jantar Mantar. Built in the 1700’s, it’s this really cool observatory that is supposed to predict the movements of the sun, moon and the planets. For as old and well preserved it is, they sure let everyone run all over the place. Brats, destroying history. I proceed to do the same.

After our day long excursion, we meet the rest of our tour group in the dining room of our hotel.
And my worst fears are confirmed. THEY’RE MOSTLY OLD PEOPLE!!!