Hi Everyone

I woke up early this morning and was in the gym early - by about 6:45. I thought I was pretty early, and fairly proud of myself until I walked in and was greeted by Lisa as she finished up her workout which began around 6. Then at breakfast, Antony showed up just having been to the gym, and thinking he was the early riser, asked where everyone else was this morning, only to find out that Lisa and I had already beaten him there.

We got into the van at around 9:15 to head to Fatehpur Sikri. This was a walled city that was built by the Mughal emperor Akbar in around 1600. It was meant to be the capital for the mughuls but was only lived in for about 15 years... It is now an abandoned city... Of course except for the hundreds of "salesmen" who sell scarves, necklaces, marble elephants and books (all of which I think are authentically made in China!).

The drive from Agra (with a stop at Fathepur) to Jaipur is about 225km, but takes about 6 hours total. Normally this would seem like a long time in the car, but I think riding in the van is one of my favourite parts. Elephants, bikes, motor bikes donkeys, goats, cows, horses, people, children dogs. My favourite today was a man on a bike with cages and cages of live chickens on the back! The best way I can describe what driving is like is to imagine a video game where the point is to avoid all sorts of moving obstacles coming at you from all angles. Right now we must be on about level 10 because our driver has not hit a thing!

A great stat that we heard today was that every day there are 10,000 people moving to Delhi - that's 365,000 per year. Kind of makes Toronto's 50,000 per year seem like nothing. Our guide estimated that the population of Delhi is closer to 28M (rather than the listed 14M).

The picture that I have attached is from the palace that the emperor Akbar built for his favourite of his 3 wives (Hindu). The Christian one was given one the size of about Simon's apartment...

Last night we ate at the Indian only restaurant in the hotel. Between the 5 of us we had lamb, chicken, cauliflower, eggplant, black dal, cucumber raita, naan, roti and a steak sandwich... It was all fantastic, sandwich included. My favourite was the Dal. It's amazing how many foods they can make out of lentils.

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