Getting to Ludhiana from New Delhi was an adventure all its own. I arrived at the airport at 2AM and exited but did not see my friend Neha who was supposed to pick me up. After about half an hour I was pretty worried, thinking that I would have to find my own way there in the dark all alone! Fortunately, she showed up just as I was reaching a point of desperation. The drive back was in a rickety jeep with a metal bar that just happened to be right under my legs as I was sitting. This was okay...for the first hour. But the drive turned out to be well over 5 hours, taking two hours alone just to get out of Delhi. Turns out it is not only marriage season but also foggy season and sometimes plane flights are even delayed due to heavy fog. Stopping for a small hot glass of chai along the road was a nice short respite. Despite the drive, however, I did get to watch a sunrise in India through heavy fog,which is a pretty magical thing- the blurry sun emerging gloomily from behind the clouds, the light filtering between sticklike trees and over dusty fields. People actually live on the side of the road in little tents, wrapped in ubiquitous beige wool shawls and crowded around fires going in the dirt or in oil drums. We shared the road with huge trucks, bicycle rickshaws, and motorbikes.

        The weather here is sunny during the daytime and really quite cold at night, which makes my stay quite nice. Ludhiana itself is a dusty town that has this amorphous city/town thing going on. It is a much larger city than it seems, mostly due to the textile factories outside the main part of the city. Everything here seems to be a beigy-whitish-brown- the roads, the brick houses, even the people!