Emmy in the Rice Paddy: Chandni Chawk

For our third full day in New Dehli, Anuj's Aunt Nisha and Uncle Vijay picked us up in the morning. Our first stop was his (other) aunt and uncle's home for lunch (from our fancy dinner the night before). The meal was absolutely delicious, but there was so. much. food. In typical Asian hospitality, we would clean our plates to be polite, only to have his aunt put more food on it. I watched as Melissa was served more potato pieces, entirely against her will (but she was gracious about it haha). After appetizers though, when we sat down to lunch, though, there was one point where Melissa looked like she was going to explode (of both food and frustration hahaha). I will always remember her glancing up at me with a spoonful of food with this look of "I'm going to die..." and I caught that glance with my own mouth stuffed and a spoonful of food midair. We both burst out laughing and couldn't stop. It was really funny :) To top it all off, we were given cardamum seeds after the meal, and I put a whole bunch in my mouth. It tasted like I ate potpourri hahah!

Stuffed to the brim, we headed to Chandni Chawk. I didn't really know what Chondni Chawk was, except for that Anuj had been talking about it for days and that it was highly recommended on TripAdvisor. It turned out to be one of my favorite places I visited in all of India. It was just chaos. Or, as Anuj says, "organized chaos." Entirely overwhelming...you would either love it or hate it ha. Chandni Chawk is an area near the Red Fort that is filled with people upon people upon people. It is also very diverse: Within one square mile there is a Hindu temple, a Sikh temple, a Baptist church, and one of the most prominent mosques in the world. Chandi Chawk itself is composed of teeny tiny windy alleys and lanes, and no lanes are labeled...Everyone just knows the alleys like the back of their hand from living there! We all took a short rickshaw ride down one of the alleys (they were little bicycle carriages that were peddled by people). We saw Anuj's great grandfather's house, where his grandma and aunt Nisha used to live... so so amazing. Definitely another highlight of the day. His family used to live in this charming little courtyard building complex that the treasurer of India formerly lived in...there was a secret underground passage to the Red Fort. The whole thing was now crumbling a bit, but you could tell that it used to be really grand. There was a fountain, but no water. It was so cool to be there (see pics below).

On our way out, after Anuj's family bought Melissa and I a few really cool hair-braided pieces(!) we stopped at the world famous restaurant Jaebi Wala for greasy fried Indian donut things! Then we were onto our next destination: Noida. We went to a family friend's gem shop where he showed us lots of crystals and beautiful stones. I went in thinking that I wouldn't buy a thing, but then I went a little bit crazy. Such gorgeous stuff at such cheap prices! I asked the clerk if he could lower the price, and Anuj and Melissa were both telling me "Emily this is the price...take it or leave it." The salesman then lowered it by 20 percent. I was proud. This isn't America. Everything is negotiable.

At night, we went out for champagne and shisha. It was quite a fancy, Old-Monk kind of night!