Namaste!

Today we started out a bit later. Thank goodness. Breakfast was great, as usual. B.K. our guide tried to get us into the famous Lotus Temple; however, after sitting on the bus for 30 minutes, he came back to tell us that just to enter the temple would be a good 1.5 hours wait.

We were intertained though by vendors across the street from us. They had sone very nice bags. Bags to carry shopping items in. Hope managed to land a nice one. The one I finally got the guy to place his hands on, was torn on the bottom, so that wasn't a sale.

After we pulled of, we saw the wait line. It had to be 200 people or more standing outside, in the 99 degree weather and the sun was extremely hot. We moved on through the city and made out way to our cooking demonstration. I wasn't quite sure what type of demonstration it could be, especially in someone's private home. We climbed 3 flights of stairs and entered her huge apartment.

There waiting were her Mother, a friend and a couple of servers.

Master Chef Komal Taneja was the perfect hostess. She demonstrated several dishes and one spicy dish had us all choking. She had to turn on the ceiling fans and open the terrace doors.

Before we ate, her friend and Mother, directed us to her private bedroom, to have us all dress in saris. This was really a nice touch. Master Chef Taneja had her dining table set-up in a circular buffet fashion. This was really nice. My favorite was the okra, onion and potatoe dish she made.

Master Chef Taneja is a jovial woman. We all laughed when she turned n this extremely loud Indian rap music. She told us the artist was Yo Yo Honey Singh. She booped and danced around and it was really amusing and asked if we knew him.

After dinner she'd set-up desserts on the table. She'd made an ice cream dish which was really good.

This was an absolutely great time. She even offered us to use her private bedroom and bathrooms.

Before we left, she actually had spices and cookbooks for sale.

We loaded back onto the bus and headed out for some shopping. We went to an upscale cotton clothing store. There were actually some great items in there and seems as though it had suddenly become extremely crowded. Our guide took us around for what seemed to be miles. I logged 6,671 steps today. The stores we'd actually liked to have visited were the stores he'd taken us right past. We were very disappointed. This shopping trip was a total bust.

We made our way back to the hotel and Hope and I walked around to visit the shoppes in the hotel. Some had really nice stuff. I had my eye on a nice pair of earrings, but decided to wait until we come back to this hotel near the end of this trip.

After shopping I headed to the room and told Hope I wasn't eating dinner. I did not want to see any food. This was a very exhausting day.