New Year's Eve in Delhi

 Woke up and got ourselves ready to have brunch at our cousin's apartment which was only "20 minutes away". Due to traffic and wrong turns by our driver it ended up being closer to an hour. We spent the morning catching up with the family and was surprised by the other cousin who was supposed to be at a destination wedding. They left early because the children had final exams on January 2nd!! So much for winter break. The cousins' invited us back to their places for New Year's Eve celebrations. They both live in the same apartment compound so we could bounce back and forth between the two. So we left to freshen up and get comfy for hanging with the family all night. When we returned we started the hopping back and forth between the cousins. One house was strict Hindu with no meat and no alcohol.....This guy was not spending New Year's Sober and Vegetarian, that was not happening so luckily the other house had chicken and adult beverages to enjoy. Luckily this cousin was a HUGE fan of Jack Daniel's so I was able to drink something I was familiar with. 

Around 9:00 PM the compound started coming alive with music so loud that even if you didn't want to partake in the festivities you were getting an earful for music. We went down for a bit and we joked how I was the first ever white guy to celebrate New Year's in the compound but I'm pretty sure that was true. This part of Delhi isn't a touristy spot and definitely out of the way. After watching my wife and cousin's "cut a rug" we went back to the DRY house and waited until 12:00 AM. Nothing too special but you could hear random fireworks nearby.

We were supposed to go see Lotus Temple and other sites but the previous days adventure and jet lag kept us with the family instead.

After that it was off to the hotel where I had to pull out my Karen Wig to get our driver into a room we had paid for and had an extra bed. They wanted extra money for the guy to stay in the room even though they charge the same rate for 1 or 2 people. We unfortunately think it was a classism thing, as there is still some caste and class related -isms that still occur. I puled out the "I wanna speak to your manager", I threatened to write a poor review (Still am)  and just raged on them at 1:00 AM, so they finally gave in. 

Agra and the Taj Mahal tomorrow