Q15: "[...] how is that going being ruled by monkeys?"

Aliza asked, "Jesse mentioned in passing yesterday that monkeys have overtaken the government building in New Delhi. I was skeptical. a) Is this true? b) If so, how is that going being ruled by monkeys?"

[First off -- oof, sorry for the big intermission in posting. Hopefully, I will continue to post regularly. No big promises, though.]

Jesse may have been referring to this article in The New York Times last year. Since those incidents, however, I think Delhi has dealt -- by what means, I don't know -- with the problem. In any case, I saw fewer monkeys in Delhi than I saw in most other places. There was a huge group of monkeys that seemed to be filing non-stop out of an abandoned building in North Delhi, but otherwise a monkeyless Delhi.

I saw the most monkeys in the state of Karnataka in South India: at the botanical gardens in Bangalore, on the top of Nandi Hills (about 45 minutes from Bangalore), around the former capital of Mysore and in the ancient ruins of Hampi. This is not to say that there are more monkeys in the South than in the North -- I just visited more monkeyish places in the South.

The effect probably wears off after living around monkeys for awhile, but I was in awe of how (perhaps unsurprisingly) human they look and act. (Or is it the other way around?) The humanoid faces and the opposable thumbs really do the trick. Social situations, like when you see one monkey grooming lice from the hair of another, are eerie.

Usually we kept to ourselves -- the monkeys in the trees or on building exteriors, and me with two feet on the ground. But in some places, like Mysore or the Bangalore botanical gardens, with bolder monkeys, there was more intra-primate interaction. Sometimes the monkeys-cum-space-invaders try to pry a bag of chips out of human hands. More often, however, they just hold out an open palm.

I'll leave you with this photograph, of a Delhi monkey doing its best "Blue Steel" impression:

Q14: "[...] ready to begin writing now? [...]"

My mom writes, "Dear Jeremy, I miss your blog and wondered if you are ready to begin writing now? What have been the highs and lows so far in India? Also do you photos of places you have been?"

Yes, my apologies for not writing since my arrival in India. This has partly been because until now there have been no new questions, but mostly because settling in (or not settling in) has been a very long process. I'm ready to write, though, so here we go...

To begin, this has been my itinerary so far:
- December 9-17: Bangalore, Karnataka
- December 18-20: Hampi, Karnataka
- December 21-22: Bangalore
- December 23-24: Mysore, Karnataka
- December 25-27: Bangalore
- December 28- January 1: Pondicherry (Union Territory)
- January 2-3: Chennai, Tamil Nadu
- January 4-19: Kolkata/Calcutta, West Bengal
- January 20-?: Delhi (Union Territory)

It would be futile to summarize the last month and a half, so I won't even try. Instead, I'll try to update more regularly over the next few weeks, either in response to questions or on general themes.

The highs and lows? The highs so far have been eating and walking in Kolkata, meeting some extremely nice people and slowly getting the hang of things. The lows so far have been illness (bacterial throat infection in early December, food poisoning in mid-December and a head cold last week), pollution in Bangalore and Kolkata (my mucus is nearly black and getting darker, I have seen blue sky once and for 15 minutes in the past two weeks) and people constantly trying to sell me things.

About photos, unfortunately my internet connection is too spotty to upload photos regularly. When I get home, though, I'll make sure to post the photos online and put the link on this blog.

### Got questions about India or my time here? Ask, ask ask... ###

Q13: "[...] is there somewhere online that we can see photos [...]?"

Hannah asks, "Not really a blog question, but is there somewhere online that we can see photos from your trip?"

Ah, you caught me! Per international travel norms, I really ought to have an online photo album (or something like that) but I don't.

I'm traveling with a digital camera and a small, low-resolution video camera -- both for the first time -- so I really should go all "new media" on you readers. But I haven't. It may just be my impatience with uploading a bunch of big files. Or, it could be that I prefer to pool my photos at the end of a trip and then cull from that pool. Whatever the cause, I'm sorry to say that there's no central repository of my photographs yet.

Nevertheless, I'll still post plenty of eye-candy when it's relevant to the questions you ask. I hope that suffices for now!

### A small loophole: I suppose you could click here to ask for some specific photographs. ###

En Route to India

I am in the sky right now, somewhere between Heathrow and Bengaluru International Airport.* This means that I'll be writing mostly about India until early March, when I return to Romania. If you have any questions about India** that you would like me to take a shot at, click here to ask!

---
* Actually, I wrote this all yesterday and had Blogspot post if for me in the future, so I'm not really blogging from the plane. Pointless, really, and all for naught if I miss my flight, but oh the wonders of the Internet.

** India is large. General questions about India are no problem, but if you want to ask more geographically-specific questions, here are the cities I plan to visit (in very rough chronological order):

- Bangalore
- Mysore
- Pondicherry (maybe)
- Hyderabad (maybe)
- Kolkata/Calcutta
- Darjeeling (maybe)
- Patna (maybe)
- Agra
- Jaipur
- Delhi
- Chandigarh
- Ahmedabad

Q12: "[...] have your travel plans changed at all [...] ?"

Kristina asks, "Not to be too much of a maternal worrywart, but have your travel plans changed at all in light of the attacks in Mumbai?"

They have, and they haven't. I'm still going to India -- in fact, I land in Bangalore in about 30 hours -- and my itinerary is generally unmodified. (I fly out of India from Mumbai, but I had not planned to spend much time there anyhow.) I suspect, however, that the attacks may change my plans in many smaller ways.

Most broadly, I will probably now spend more time outside large cities than within them. And while I never planned to stay in ritzy hotels or eat in chic restaurants, now I'll avoid them deliberately. Among my largest concerns is that I'll spend more time looking over my shoulder than in more interesting directions.

After failing to pick up much Romanian, I have been looking forward to reading local and national newspapers over breakfast in India. Now I'll keep a particularly keen eye on national security news.

Were any readers of this blog traveling through (or living in) Madrid, London or New York after the attacks there? If so, do you have any tips for staying sane while remaining safe? You can comment below or send me an email. Thanks!

Q11: "How's the beer?"

Jonny asks, "How's the beer?"

In Romania*, inexpensive but generally boring. To produce a more specific, pseudo-scientific answer, Kim and I did a mini beer-tasting over two days. We bought four pint-cans of Romanian beer from the corner store: Ursus, Bergenbier and Silva "Strong Dark Beer". We had another, Timisoreana, in the fridge from a previous groceries trip. Each can cost between 2.00 and 2.50 lei, or roughly $0.70-$0.90 (USD).


The results follow, in order of tasting:


Bergenbier: Light in color, weak in hops. Could pass for Budweiser, Coors, etc.


Ursus: Very similar to Bergenbier. Too similar, in fact. After we accidentally mixed up our glasses, we couldn't distinguish one from the other.


Silva "Strong Dark Beer": Looks like a red ale, with noticeable hops and a very creamy feel. The only can we finished.

Timisoreana: We skipped this one. We had tried it a few weeks earlier and we realized part-way through the tasting that it would be indistinguishable from both Ursus and Bergenbier.

* I may post an update later about Indian beer, if readers are interested.

Another Update to Q9: Fish, Seven Ways

Here's another update to Dan's question about food in Romania:

Last Sunday, we stayed the evening at a friend's home in Braila, near the Danube Delta in eastern Romania. Our friend's father is a priest of the Eastern Orthodox persuasion -- Romania's dominant religion/worldview -- so his family was rigorously observing "Post," the month before Christmas during which you eat no meat but have tons of fish on Sundays. There are other Post rules, such as no marriages, but the dietary restrictions seem to be the most prominent.

Anyhow, the point of this Post blog-post is just to list the seven preparations of fish on the table that night:

- Grilled "Danube" fish (species unclear, but trout-like)

- Fried fish cutlets (species unclear, but it had a very dry, meaty texture)

- Smoked salmon fillet

- Smoked herring fillet

- Salt-cured fish fillet (species unclear, but salmon-like)

- Salmon paste

- Fish roe paste (species unclear, but likely carp roe)

Partly out of curiosity and partly out of courtesy, I tried a little of each. The pastes were surprisingly tasty (kind of like a salty-vinegary whipped butter). The smoked fillets were also good, though chewier and saltier than smoked salmon from a States-side deli. Nothing out of the ordinary about the grilled or fried fish.