Home Sweet Home!

Hey everybody! I made it home safely on Thursday and even finagled a three seat row to myself for the 15 hour flight from Delhi to New York (so got in a good 9 or 10 hours of sleep). I only had a two hour layover at JFK to get through immigration, pick up my luggage, get through customs, recheck my luggage, change terminals and get to my gate. My heart sank when I entered Immigration and saw at LEAST 1,000 people. I figured there was no way I'd make my flight. But due to my "short" connection they moved me towards the front of the line, so I made it through in 30 or 40 minutes. Unfortunately, I then had to wait another 40 minutes or so for my luggage to show up for me to get through customs. By the time I got to my gate they were already boarding. Unfortunately, my luggage didn't make it, so they put it on the next flight and delivered it to my home that afternoon - which was quite nice/painless.
My largest adjustment (well, other than the time adjustment/jet-lag) has been driving. I hadn't driven in a month, and the two things that struck me here at home were a) how quiet the roads seem here. (I didn't think I'd noticed all the honking in India- maybe I subconsciously tuned it out- but IDifinitely noticed the LACK of honking in Charlotte. It is really nice, but was a little unsettling at first) and b) that everybody seems to stay within the lanes here!!!  If there are lines painted on the road, people seem to stay in them. What an amazing concept!

Ok. I expect this to be my last post. Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this trip as much as I did!  Please keep in touch: sheribrillhart@yahoo.com. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays (and New Year) to you! 

Goodbye India. Thanks for a fantastic experience!

I'll be hopping on a plane and heading back to the US in less than five hours. I've had a terrific time here, as I hope you can tell, but I'm ready now and excited to go home. I expect to post a couple of more things once I'm stateside just to wrap up my final thoughts on this entire experience. Talk to you soon from "the other side"!

T minus 36 hours until departure - plus Weddings

I will be leaving India in about 36 hours.  I feel ready to go, but as I explained before I think that's mainly just because that's the plan, so once the departure date started closing in I mentally/emotionally started checking out a bit.  This is not unusual for me when I travel anywhere for more than a couple of weeks.  I've done better than I expected with the crowds, etc here but then again I've been largely sheltered from them > usually just observing from the inside of a car.  But I've hit a point where even that is starting to wear on me.  I have not yet been out at any point in time, whether it was 6am, 10am, 6pm or midnight, where there have not been huge masses of people out and about.  Seeing the poverty in Mumbai sort of "in my face" really wore on me emotionally as well.  I know that it exists everywhere, but it seemed more visible and therefore more prevalent there.

On a lighter and super cool note, I had the awesome opportunity last night to attend part of an Indian wedding.  It was the wedding of a very close family friend of one of my colleagues.  For those of you that don't know, Indian weddings are a BIG deal.... and they don't just occur on weekend nights - they are all throughout the week, especially during this "wedding season".  An ideal night is selected for the couple based on alignment of the stars, or moon, or zodiac signs or something like that.  I haven't quite caught on to that piece yet - but I know there's a method! The weddings often occur in a HUGE (often open) "tent" (think Oktoberfest sized "tent" for those that have been there!) When I arrived, there were approx. 400 or 500 people milling around.  There was food EVERYWHERE.  On one side of the tent were "appetizers" and on the other side was the "dinner" (they opened the dinner/dessert section a bit later than that appetizers section).  Of course I tried 3 to 4 appetizers and was completely full by then so never got to the dinner section, other than to check out it's vast array of options.  The event supposedly started at 8.  I arrived around 10 and the bride and groom were no where to be found.  Around 10:30pm fireworks started going off nearby, which was an indication that the groom was making his way to the tent.  He was seated on "throne" at the end of a procession that included his party dancing constantly with lots of lights and loud music.  I have a very short video (and a number of poor quality pics) so that you can hear the noise from the music and get a feel for the procession.  It took about an hour for him to make it about a city block!  At that point I had to leave, so I never even got to see the bride arrive but I did get a shot of a poster that was up of a picture of the bride and groom together.  The brides father pays for the wedding, and also gives a large sum of cash to the groom/his family, this is essentially his daughter's portion of her inheritance.  So when the father passes on, his "estate" will actually be divided only amongst his sons.  It's traditional to offer the father of the bride an envelope with cash in it, I think between $50 and $100 (which is ends up covering your cost of being there, which is often about $70/person or maybe even more!)  Below, I'll post some pics and that video that I mentioned.  Sorry they are such poor quality - I elected not to take my iPad to the wedding, but I immediately regretted it.  The quality on the iPad is much better than on my phone.  Anyway, I'm also posting a picture of a small container that I received on the flight back from Mumbai that had cashews in it.  Notice what's written on the front - I felt like they'd personalized it for me! :-)

 The groom's party outside proceeding down the street dancing

 That's the groom sitting in his carriage at the end of the procession

 Here's the video just to give you a small/short taste of the loud music of the groom's party

 Just inside the wedding "tent"

 Some of my colleague's relatives in their gorgeous sarees

 A poster of the wedding couple

 This Audi is the wedding gift.  Nice, eh?

 

Pics from Grocery Store and Mumbai

OK folks I'm going to try and upload some pics for you from both the Grocery Store/sweets shop and from Mumbai/Bombay (despite how cramped the grocery store is, look how much shelf space seems to be devoted to "Tang" in the second picture).  

 The round "balls" on the middle shelf are called "Ladoo", and there are many different versions of it (sort of like how you can get all different kinds of donuts!)

 The dish below is known as "Pani Puri".  A spicy liquid (you can ask for it as spicy or non-spicy as you'd like) is poured into the middle before you eat....

 This is the Police HQ.  Notice the beautiful colonial architecture.

 Below is a picture (unfortunately not too close) of some of the Mumbai slums nestled in the middle of the city

 A Mumbai beach

 The Mumbai beach, just a few minutes later as the sun is setting....

Grocery shopping (cont'd), Mumbai and Dabbawalas

Since there is demand for International products as well, the shelves in this small space are packed with things from all over the world. I noticed a 12 or 16 oz bottle of coffee creamer from the US, available in just one flavor, selling for about $12!! And non Indian cheeses selling for $15 for about 8 oz. overall, it was a fascinating experience.

Mumbai:
EARLY the next morning ( the driver picked me up at 5:45am. Thanks largely to my friends in the US that agreed to give me wake up calls around 6:15pm EST I managed to be ready when he got there!) I headed to Mumbai (flight time of 2 hours).  I met with colleagues there for work on Friday then stayed to see a bit of the city on Saturday, getting "home" to Gurgaon late Saturday night.  I mistakenly thought that Mumbai would be a lot like Delhi, but it has a completely different feel. For starters, it's on the water. I can't tell you how ecstatic I was to see a large body of water - that's alway very calming to me. Sadly, Mumbai is even more polluted than Delhi, despite there being more cars in Delhi, so you often couldn't see very far out before the smog blocked the view. Mumbai also has a number of beautiful gardens and palm trees, etc lining the streets. Overall it felt more "green" to me, which was nice. Finally, there is a lot of colonial architecture there that I found very beautiful - the central train station, the police headquarters, a university, etc. I'll try and post pics of all the things I've described in this paragraph when I can. Unfortunately, despite seeing Slumdog Millionaire, I still was not prepared for the masses of makeshift shantytowns everywhere. There is such a stark contrast between the really rich (I passed the 40 story building that serves as the home for one of the worlds richest men) and the really poor, who live under blue tarps held up by wooden poles, scattered anywhere throughout the city. I think I unconsciously turned off my emotions temporarily because I was just overwhelmed and unable to process what I was seeing, because my brain automatically tried to imagine what daily life my look like for the folks living under those tarps. Before this blog site kicks me off again I want to share with you a link that I'd ask you to please check out. It's about the Dabbawala's who are a predominately illiterate and uneducated group of men that perform a service to pick (from a business persons home) their home cooked meal and deliver it to them at the work place. It's a fascinating six sigma business that navigates the complex public transportation system to deliver the meals correctly and on-time with incredible accuracy (an amazing study of six sigma principles carried out by these uneducated individuals with very little use of technology). Here's a Wikipedia link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala.
I have more to say about a few other observations I've made about lifestyles here and the labor market, but I'll address those either later today or tomorrow. I've also been invited to part of an Indian wedding tomorrow night, which I'm super excited about. I think I've mentioned that it's wedding season here. There are a lot of large wedding halls along the major roads and I've heard and experienced that this can lead to HUGE traffic jams as people trying to get to the wedding will eventually just leave their car on the side of the road. It's quite an "Industry" here. 

Grocery shopping

I know I've been out of touch for the last few days so I wanted to take a few minutes to catch you up. But before I jump in I wanted to let you know that although I likely won't be posting any pictures today, I'll try to figure out how to do so over the next couple of days. Worst case scenario I'll post a bunch of pics and videos of some of the scenes I'll be describing to you today once I get home to the US later this week. I've felt a bit handicapped this last week since my computer died and even though I have a loaner it's capabilities are inhibited. I must say that my iPad (which I'm using to write this post) has been a life saver. Thank you, McGladrey, for giving these out to your employees earlier this year - what a difference it's made! It's also what I use to take all of the pics and videos that I post, yet somehow I can't figure out how to upload them directly from the iPad!
Before I forget: as I've glanced back over past blogs I've seen a ton of typos. Sorry about that! Please just mentally spell check as you read - I obviously type too fast sometimes without stopping to re-read.

Grocery shopping:
(note: the blog below cuts off, so I'll continue it on the next one)
One thing that I love to do when visiting another country is wander around the grocery store. It's so interesting to me to see the types of food available, the brands that are popular, and the flavors of things that are available. I'm sure that many of you have heard of the "Big Mac index", which includes comparing the price of a Big Mac in different countries to get a feel for the cost of living differentials. Well, I also believe there's a "Snack food Index" that tells you a whole lot about the flavor preferences of a population. As an example, I've noticed that Lay's potato chips are common here and the flavors that are most prevalent seem to be Masala (mixture of Indian spices), Tomato Ketchup (yup, that's what I said!) and now Sour Cream & Chives is growing in popularity. In other parts of Asia there are a lot of shrimp and/or seafood flavored chips.  Wasabi peanuts seem popular across the board! Looking at this stuff has always been of interest to me, dating back to my teenage years when I first started traveling internationally. But now that I spend a lot of time working with a client that is a snack food manufacturer, it's even more interesting to me.
Anyway, on Thursday night the wife of one of my colleague's was going shopping, and they knew this was of interest to me, so I tagged along. As you can imagine, land/space are at a premium in India. So the grocery store we went to was in an outdoor shopping center that has all kinds of stores and restaurants - an outrageously priced fresh produce only shop, various shoe, clothing and home goods/appliance stores, a newly opened "the Body Shop", bakeries and traditional sweets shops and restaurants of various ethnicities. The grocery store itself was on two stories. There are no carts, only limited baskets. Everything is SO crammed in that there would be no way a cart would fit in there. I would say the width of the aisle was probably the length of my leg (and at 5'7" that's not very long/wide!) There is barely room to move as people are trying to maneuver to get the things they are looking for. I was surprised at all of the options available. Divya explained that there is demand for imports as well as Indian brands, so 

Computers, mornings and home sickness

So, my computer is officially dead. That has thrown a bit of a wrench into my productivity this week. There is a loaner here that I'm using but due to various security protocols that my Firm has in place I can't access a number of things back in the US. So I guess that's just another way to ensure that I'm not "overdoing it" over here.

I have been successful at being able to get up in the mornings and exercise this week. That's a much better start to my day than the past couple of weeks where I'd wake up late still feeling groggy from the over the counter sleep aid I took the night before just to be able to fall asleep at all.... Though I have to admit. I'm VERY nervous about this coming Friday. I have a 7:30am flight out of Delhi to Mumbai. I have been afraid to ask what time I'll have to leave the hotel in order to make that flight!  It's gonna be rough!

While I was writing this the power went out briefly. This reminded me that I don't think I'd mentioned on here that the power goes out anywhere from 3-8 times a day in this city. Most places have their own back-up generators to deal with it, so it's never usually out for more than about 20 seconds as it switches to the generator, but it's a strange sensation nonetheless.

As I write this it's 10am on Wed 12/5 here. I leave at the end of the day one week from today (technically my flight departs at 1:30am next Thursday am/ Wednesday pm).  I'm sure that you can tell from my blog that I'm having a great time and the folks here are taking excellent care of me. But I learned long ago that whenever I'm on a trip that's longer than a week I start to get homesick and feel ready to go home that last week. If the trip is two weeks then with one week left I'll start to want to go home. If the trip was five weeks somehow I'd be fine until the end of week four. So, based on my history, and I can sense it starting now, I'll begin really looking forward to going home over the next few days.

Oh yes. One last interesting tidbit that you might find interesting. I've realized that it's completely normal in the work place over here for folks to speak English to each other rather than Hindi, the National language. At first I thought this was just for my benefit but I've realized that's not the case. It's not uncommon at all to hear Indians speaking English to each other with no foreigners around.

Ok, that's all for now. Have a good day/night!

Adjusting

Well, now that I've been here 2 1/2 weeks I feel like my body is finally settling in and getting adjusted. Better late than never! I seem to be starting to sleep normally without sleep aids (which means that I'm getting tired and falling asleep a little earlier than I had been and therefore waking up a little earlier). This morning I actually woke up feeling well rested 20 minutes before my alarm went off. That NEVER would've happened last week! I've also been able to start working a run (on a treadmill, not outside) into my routine occasionally (I'm sure that's been helping with my sleep).

After I'd written the subject line I stopped and thought about and it made me chuckle. One of my colleagues here explained to me that you'd hear Indians often say "Adjust, adjust". With all of the people here they learn to adjust to accommodate others. That's what happens constantly on the roads - rather than honking because a car might be trying to move into their space, cars/rickshaws and mopeds just move, or adjust, slightly to make room for them. Or if there is a packed bus or rickshaw someone else might just cram on and say "adjust? Adjust?" and next thing you know there's another passenger crammed in like a sardine :-). Anyway, there's a small lesson there for me in learning to be more flexible and adjusting to what life or people throw my way...

The Taj Mahal, "family" and other observations

For those of you that saw my earlier blogs you know that I was a bit overwhelmed earlier this week.  I tried to take things a bit easier the second half of the week and took Friday off to make up, a little bit, for the Thanksgiving weekend/holiday that I missed.  Friday morning a driver arrived at 10 to take me to the town of Agra, home of the Taj Mahal.  The Taj Mahal ("TM" henceforth :-) ) is closed on Fridays so my only task that day was to get to Agra and check into my hotel so that I could go see it "early" Saturday morning.  (I use the term "early" rather loosely because a couple of months ago I would've defined early as 5 or 6 am, but since I've been here, early has shifted to 8 or 9am!  Hopefully I can get back into the swing of things when I get back to the US!).  The trip from Gurgaon to Agra can take anywhere from 3 to 7 hours, depending on the day, time of day, etc.  For us it took 5 1/2 to get there.  That probably sounds long and horribly boring, but I have to admit - it flew by.  I finished a good book that I was reading and then I spent a lot of time just looking out the window and taking it all in.  As I've mentioned before, I could spend all day people watching here because it's so different from what I'm used to.  There are SO many people and they are all just going about their business living life.  I don't feel like I see people looking frazzled and rushing about their day (which is how I envision myself and many others in the US).  Often, they are just sitting around at their vegetable cart or tire shop waiting for what life is going to bring them next.  I wish I could adopt more of that attitude.  It seems like if life doesn't hand me chaos/craziness the peace and quiet will unnerve me and I'll make up my own chaos!  Anyway, I took a ton of short videos and pictures on the way to Agra... all were very typical of the sights on the way there.  I often don't speak in the videos so as not to create any biases but pay attention to some of the following:

• There's a picture of some women on the side of the road in their gorgeous sarees.  As I've mentioned, the women's clothing is just beautiful, EVERYWHERE, along dirt roads, crammed on the back of mopeds or in an auto rickshaw, etc.
• There were a ton of tractors on the "highway", pulling carts full of grain or vegetables, or maybe just by themselves
• There are tire shops EVERYWHERE.  At first I couldn't figure out what was up with all the tire shops, and how they could all stay in business and then I realized, "DUH, Brillhart, there are rickshaws, bikes and cars everywhere and they ALL need tires!"
• Anywhere you go it seems like there is endless unfinished building construction.  I'm not sure if the builders just run out of money, or, if I understood correctly, it seems like builders may start projects illegally and the local gov't may turn a blind eye at first, but once construction is really underway step in and look for bribes to allow the construction to continue... so some builders just walk away

One of thousands of tire "shops"

A number of folks (note the ladies in their sarees...) crammed onto an auto rickshaw

Some older folks crammed on a moped

Some ladies in their sarees

I've also taken some videos during the trip, just trying to capture the typical sights and sounds as you drive through a "town"

And here's one that shows some unfinished construction as well as a makeshift shantytown on the side of the road.  That's the worst "housing" arrangement I've seen since I've been here, but who knows what I haven't seen.

Agra:

I arrived in the town of Agra around 3:30 in the afternoon on Friday.  I was staying at a huge, beautiful hotel (the JayPee Palace Hotel for for those of you that know the area).  When I got there my first impulse was to sign up for Wi-Fi at the hotel so that I could get on-line.  I realized that this constant need to be/feel "connected" had been a bit of my problem earlier in the week, so I decided to stay completely off the grid until I got back to Gurgaon the next day (other than a pre-arranged phone call to catch up with a friend).  It proved to be a good decision > I used that time to read, watch some videos I'd saved on my iPad, think and generally just "veg".  It was surprising to me to realize how almost addicted I am to being "connected" whether it's through e-mail, cell phone, Skype, FaceBook, etc.  What a wake up call!  Where did the days go, thinking back to my time living in Budapest 18 - 20 years ago when I managed just fine with no landline, no cell phone, no internet connection and no FaceBook!  (Though I was thankful that the office had a fax machine so my family could reach me with critical/important news if need be).  I think I'll need to start taking a "technology break" a bit more often. 

I was also surprised to realize Friday evening that all I'd eaten all day was some fruit for breakfast around 9am - yet I  didn't get hungry until about 7pm that night.  I experienced the same thing on Saturday.  As I mentioned before, I don't know if it's the food here or (much more likely) my malaria medication, but something is overloading my system.....So the break from food other than fruit and veggies for two days was a welcome change.  (I'm also thrilled to say that - in accordance with my doctor's orders - yesterday was the first day that I was allowed to exercise again so I got in a short 5km run in they once I got back to my hotel in Gurgaon. I'm hopeful that being able to exercise again will be helpful).

OK, I'll get to the Taj Mahal soon, but there's one last thing "pre-Taj" thing that I wanted to talk about.  I'm not entirely sure, but my guess is that my driver, Manish, that brough me to Agra, after dropping me off at the hotel took the car somewhere more "acceptable" and slept in the car while I slept in the hotel (he wouldn't have been allowed to sleep in the car in the particular hotel I was staying in).  I didn't quite know how to process this information when I first heard it.  It seems absurd.  Yet it's quite normal nnd accepted here. I still don't know how to process it.

Taj Mahal:

Manish picked me up at 9am and we headed to the Taj Mahal.  They say it's absolutely gorgeous during sunrise, so many people try to get there for that.  If I didn't struggle so much to get up every morning (really, how many different things can I reasonably to blame on my "malaria medication"???? Heck, I'm gonna take advantage of it while I can) I probably would've done that too.... but instead, I opted for a 9am pick-up time :-)  Anyway, after we got to the parking area, I didn't know he was going to do this, but Manish went with me to the TM.  First we had to get tickets.  I've heard that they've only charged for admittance for the past 10 years or so.  Entrance for an Indian national is 20 rupees (less than $0.50) and Entrance for a foreign national was 750 rupees ($15).  With the $15 you get a bottle of water, shoe covers (you either need to wear the booties, or take your shoes off before entering the TM - all of the marble can get hot in the sun, which is one of the reasons nationals like to go early), and a "tram ride" to get you about 1km closer to the TM.  Manish bought his own booties and tried to tell me to take the tram and that he'd meet me there.  That obviously seemed like a ridiculous idea to me.  After sitting in a car for 5 1/2 hours the day before a walk sounded good.  So we walked.  About 1/4 to 1/2 mile from the TM all vehicles are denied entry so everyone must walk from that point.  Once we got inside the "gate" there were often signs showing that "regular" ticket holders were to go one way and "high value" ticket holders were to go another.  It really made me a little uncomfortable and  left a bad taste in my mouth.  Here's an example:

Anyway, by way of brief history, for those that don't know (I didn't....) the Taj Mahal is a mausoleum to memorialize "Mumtaz Mahal" (the nickname for the third and favorite wife of Shah Jahan, the fifth Mughal emperor.  Mumtaz Mahal means "Jewel of the Palace" and she died giving birth to their thirteenth or fourteenth (I've read differing accounts) child.  Legend has it that she asked the Shah to build her a monument so beautiful that the world would never forget their love.  It took 20,000 laborers  17 years to build the marble monument.  It's absolutely beautiful and completely symmetrical, other than the Shah's tomb.  (His wife's tomb is in the exact center of the inner chamber, which is smaller than I anticipated - it seemed to me to be just smaller than the size of a little league baseball diamond, and his is next to it. Though actually, they are both buried in a crypt below those structures that appear to be tombs).  The whole place, the gardens outside, the entrance the outside of the actual Taj - with the various flower carvings (flowers were believed to symbolize paradise on earth) and calligraphy (see pics below), and the inside of the monument are all just breathtaking.  I'm sure that my pictures don't capture it, but I tried!  Please see below:

The picture of above is the Taj Mahal from the front (you can tell by the tree leading up to it. Now here's one from the side, which will look amazingly similar!

I tried to get some close-ups of the beautiful detail on the outside of the structure:

This is some of the calligraphy, and below are some of the flowers:

Here's a video of the inside of the Taj.  I know it's not great quality, but I wanted to give you some sense of the size:

Heading "home":

After visiting the Taj Mahal Manish and I headed back to Gurgaon.  It's funny, I've only been here 2.5 weeks, but I'm make my hotel room here in the Courtyard Marriott in Gurgaon my home away from home.  I actually missed it when I was in Agra and I'm sure I'll miss it this coming week when I spend Friday night in Mumbai (I'll be working there on Friday).  When I went down to the restaurant to grab some soup and grilled vegetables (in various forms) for dinner, one of the guys that worked there was walking by, saw me, stopped and said "Hi.  It's good to see you.  How are you?  I didn't see you a breakfast this morning?"  I told him that I'd spent the night in Agra.  He asked which hotel and when I told him he said "Oh, that's a very nice hotel!"  I agreed, but explained that I really just missed it here.  He smiled and said "Of course you did, you are like part of our family now.  We know you, you know us, we know what you like, your preferences.  You are a part of us."  It's true.  It made me think back to the job I had years ago in Pittsburgh where I would often travel overseas for 3-5 weeks at a time.  Without fail there were always one or two people that worked either at the hotel or at a restaurant that I frequented that I'd connect to, that somehow made me feel at home - at what an amazing feeling that is.... In Glenelg (Adelaide) Australia it was the lade that made my to go latte each morning, in Buenos Aires, it was "Luz" who brought me my room service breakfast - and would let me know if my co-worker (who wasn't always the most responsible) was up yet or if he needed some "nudging", in Brazil it was a bartender who taught me how to make an authentic Brazilian Caipirinha (and who is still a friend of mine today, probably reading this blog).  I know that I often underestimate the difference that a sincere smile and a kind, genuine word can make.  I was telling a friend of mine about this a week or two ago:  I hope that I can manage to take a little more of that home with me > to get less stressed about getting done all of the work or other things I feel pressure to accomplish and take more time to just slow down, smile more, show a genuine interest in people and just be a little bit kinder.  When I get stressed or frazzled, those are the first things that go out the window.  I hope and pray I can learn for them to be so much more a part of me that they are not easily shaken.

OK, I'm sure I had more observations, but that's all that I can muster up for now.  Besides, I'm sure you are tired of reading this novel!

 I know that for many of you the comment section of the blog page does not work for some reason.  Always feel free to e-mail me (at whatever e-mail address of mine you have) or message me on Facebook if we're connected there.

All the best! 

Sheri

Food, food and more food

I have quite a treat for you all today. The team that is doing some work for me here invited me to share their lunch with them. I've been told that Indians learn from a very young age at school to share most things, and at least when it comes to food I have found this to be true for sure.  I'm attaching a short video and snapshot of my lunch, which included paratha, and then various combinations of veggies and spices. The new thing for me was trying curd.  Not sure I'd choose it on my own but it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be :-)

And here's my plate.....

Then, not too long after that another co-worker stopped by to see what I was doing for lunch. After I told him I'd already eaten he said he was going out to the street vendor on the corner to get noodles. Well, I decided that I had to go with him to get a video of the vendor and the noodle (and paratha) making process. Turns out the noodles are just Ramen noodles (the brand is "Maggi" for those who know it) with an Indian spice packet. Then they throw in veggies or egg or both depending on what you order. I'll include a pic of the final product. Bon Appetit!

The video below is the guys cooking the parathas.  To his right is the guy boiling the ramen noodles and the stir-frying veggies for it with spices in a wok.  Unfortunately,  I didn't get a good shot of the noodle guy...

And here's the noodles that were end result of what we bought at the vendor...

Tomorrow I head to Agra, town of the Taj Mahal.  I'll visit the Taj early Saturday morning (I've heard it preferable since you have to take your shoes off and the marble gets quite hot as the day goes on) so hope to have a good update for you after that!