All good things must come to an end!

Now is a strange time in Delhi; apart from the fact that everybody (everybody!) seems to have left the city for their summer holidays, the people that are being transferred are packing up and leaving one by one... a lot of saying "auf wiedersehen" as many of the people leaving are the ones that welcomed us here, took us around and helped us adjust to India.
I will miss many of them very much...especially my friend Tanja who was the first to show me around, who has been my shoulder to cry on over all those personnel problems that we have had, who always knew all the good places and adresses and with whom I spent many shopping experiences (she is, like me, not a shop-until-you-drop-person).

In this picture she is showing me the secret stairways to the rooftop amidst the spice market, from where you can look over the city, the chaos below, the people drying rose leaves on the roofs and the spiceboys turning over...yes, what? We have tried to distinguish whatever they were turning but it could vary from beans to camel-dung....?!
Anyway...my future guests will thank her, because the stairs are hard to find and quite exciting to walk on...but what a lovely view! The "guru" in the other picture is Tanja's friend. He has a little shop, somewhere in the middle of the Stairs to Spiceheaven, and he likes to be photographed...and no, I don't think he actually is a guru, but who cares. He has this pair of glasses that look as if he saved them from the 70ies (probably did) and he wears traditional clothes, and sitting on the floor the way he does he might as well be a guru...Spiceguru in Spiceheaven.

I have decided that now that my friends are leaving I should get busy doing other things (as I said, I am not such a shopper) so I will be trying Yoga! After all, I AM in the land of yoga! Still, I am not sure if yoga is the thing for me, but I have been recommended a teacher who actually does private classes in your home, so I'll give it a try.

Unfortunately, in my home, some things have NOT changed....the noisy neighbours are STILL hammering the walls down (you would think there is nothing left to hammer by now, after they have been hammering non-stop for 4 months, but they seem quite capable of finding that last piece of wall still standing). I am waiting for the moment when I open my closet and stare into a face of a Rajasthani with a hammer!