Live, from Bollywood!

We made it to India! Approximately 16 hours after leaving Shanghai, we arrived in Delhi, India, ready to start our adventure.

The comparisons to China are inevitable, and our tour guide, who picked us up from the airport, spent the entire drive to town trying to figure out how India stacks up against China. We figured out part of his motivation later -- he went into a speech about how much less working class (particularly those unfortunate enough to be in the tourism industry!) folks in India made compared with China, and how it was because of the Indian reliance on tipping. He added some colorful language about tradition and history in an attempt to romanticize it, but yeah, they're all looking for tips. I tried to lower his expectations by relating our 2 1/2 years in China, where tips are verboten, and how that was the custom, etc., but to no avail.

Luckily, our friends Marc and Meredith were here recently and gave us tipping guidelines. So far, its 100 rupees (about $2.50) for the slick talking guide and 100 for the driver. Yes, it took 2 people to pick us up for some reason. And 50 for the hotel bellhop.

Anyway, Tiffany is happy, because animals abound! We are in Varanasi right now, land of the holy Ganges river, and have seen cows, dogs, cats, monkeys and goats freely roaming the streets, in traffic, even a large cow taking up residence in a store.

We hope to post pics later, but that's it for now!