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January 17, 1996 New York, NY The Journey Begins
JFK airport was our first taste of Indian culture. By sheer coincidence, the flight we were taking to Amsterdam was continuing to Bombay, so it was full of Indians. We got our first taste of the patience needed for travel in South Asia when we found out that our flight was 5 1/2 hours late. Nice EconoLodge they got out there.
Dad dropping us off, Erik levitating the video camera.
January 18-23, 1996 Amsterdam, Lille, Oxford, London Sex, Squids, Trains and John Goucheman
Arriving in Amsterdam, we headed directly for Bob's Youth Hostel, the hippest joint in town. We dropped off our stuff and headed out. Lots of french fries in paper cones with mayonnaise, sex shops, coffeeshops. We were on a tight budget, so we indulged little. Mostly stuck to the fries.

Hanging out at Bob's a little later, we ran right into John Goucheman, a friend from the neighborhood in Baltimore. The first of many "small world" experiences to come.

Money preservation was the top priority for our week in Europe, and what's the key to saving money while traveling? Family! So we headed for Lille, France to stay with my aunt and uncle. They hooked us up well, and the next day we were on our way to London on the Chunnel Train thing.

Skipping out of London, we headed for Oxford to stay with another friend from good old Baltimore. When we felt we had tormented these people quite enough, we went into London for a day before our flight.


More Pictures from Europe
Zach beckoning us to some perversion or other
January 24-28, 1996 New Delhi --> Agra Jazz Funerals and Marble
Arriving in New Delhi ranks among the weirdest experiences of my life. I mean weird, like, weird, weird. Stepping off of that plane was like stepping onto another planet. Everything was different and I don't think any of us were really ready for it.
We dodged our way through the mobs of touts selling everything from sleeping bags to sleeping bags and found our way to a hotel where we were obscenely overcharged. After taking a walk around and discovering Delhi to be loud and overwhelming, we found a place to get a soyburger (?) and settled in for a long winter's rest.
(I swear there was a jazz funeral that night)
We decided the best plan was to leave the big city, so we headed for Agra, site of the Taj Mahal. Agra proved to be a much calmer place by Indian standards and we stayed a few days, saw the Taj of course, and found the first of a series of restaurants which would become our "regular spots" in every town.
More Pictures from Agra A bit to the left there


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