Sunday, February 5, 2012

Delhi - Day 3

Today we are scheduled to fly to udaipur, but we aren't quite sure when we are actually flying out. The airline, kingfisher, keeps changing the flight times on us. So odd. Still, we are going with the flow and continuing our tour of Delhi until we know when we can leave.

We started the morning out with a reading of the "matrimonial" section in the Sunday paper. This section is an ISO section for families looking to make a match for heir son or daughter. It is quite detailed and was pretty comical to our western ears. However, most of us would not have put it past our Jewish mothers to try and do something similar to find us a match! LOL!  I don't have a copy of the paper right now, but I hope to get a picture later thus trip to give you an idea of the typed if ads listed.

What's interesting is the matrimonial section is set up by caste system.  95% of marriages in India are arranged. Our guide's marriage was arranged. He first met his wife when ur was younger and tjw 2nd time he met his wife was when he married her. Things have since changed and while he never spoke baffle to his parents his kids do. He's not sure ifbhis kids would be open to an arranged marriage.  Arranged marriages aren't about individuals, but about families. The parents think in terms of whether the match would be good for *our* family.  Also, the horoscope is important in determining whether it would be a good marriage or not.

Our first stop today was Qtab Minar. It's a tower built by one if the earlier Muslim dynasties in the 12th century. I must admit i really didn't pay much attention to what Piyush was saying about the site, do there's not much I can share.  The architecture and ruins were really neat so I just wandered around, taking lots of pictures. At one point there were a bunch of families taking family pictures and a friend offered to take a picture for one of them. The family then asked us to all join in as well, so I now have a great picture with my new Indian family. ;-)  Others then asked me to take pictures with them as well. It was as if I was back at the Great Wall when all the Chinese and Japanese men wanted pictures with me!  Blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin is a novelty here. We got lots of stares yesterday and I expect to get many more throughout the trip.

After Qtab Minar, we headed to the airport to fly to Udaipur. Our flight was originally scheduled for 12:15, but kept getting changed on us, as I mentioned above.  At this point we are supposedly leaving at 3:30. We were supposed to go on a boat ride tonight, but now of looks like we are going to miss it. Hopefully we can reschedule it for tomorrow night.


1 comment:

Katie said...

Who's the cute guy?