more mehendi and a night out on the town

hmmm, the photos on this post turn out kind of weird. click on the title of the post to see the photos, or the long, thin, rectangular box under the title. it'll take you to photobucket.com, and you can see my photos there...

i know that i still have to explain the last series of photos from orya basti, but i wanted to try out photobucket.com for my new photos. my stupid webpicassa is already saying that i have maxed out the number of photos that i'm allowed to put up on the site, so i've had to change to another photo thingie. it seems better anyway...

these photos are from friday night. anisha, casey and i decided to go out to this restaurant in a hotel, called hotel ranjeet. a lot of restaurants here are called "hotel something-or-other" and are just restaurants, but hotel ranjeet really is a hotel. at any rate, the food was pretty good but we couldn't help but notice that aside from a british couple who retired soon after we got there, we were the only women there. as the night wore on we realized that because the restaurant serves alcohol it was a bit of a drinking establishment in the evenings. i, of course, took up this rare opportunity to have a beer. the beer here is pretty light, and has a very distinct aftertaste that i wasn't all that crazy about. on the upside, it cost about $2 canadian for a 600ml bottle. it might even be cheaper than idee fixe.... the waiter did think, however, that we were all splitting the beer, which sadly, no, was all for myself:)

after diner we stopped at the corner store, and anisha and i had , you guessed it, more mehendi done! the daughter of the store owner did a really good job on both anisha's arms and my right arm! you can see the photos... the whole family was really sweet and nice though. they have an eight-year-old son who was really cute. i actually taught him how to use my nikon camera, so some of the photos attached are ones that he took. anyway, we ended up staying there until midnight getting the mehendi and hanging out. it was nice to spend some time with a very happy family. they thought i was hilarious because i kept miming everything i wanted to try to say... we also got a tour of the actual store, which is jam-packed with about a million different things. the space is tiny, but you can get everything from fresh eggs, to race-car shaped toothbrushes, to indian sweets there! the photo only show a fraction of what is actually available.

anyway, i'll write about my trip to delhi later. there are some good photos from sunday in particular:)