"Y'know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in New Delhi?"

"They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?"

"No, man, they don't eat beef."

"Well, what's a Big Mac?"

"Big Mac's a Big Mac, 'cept in New Delhi, they call it a Maharaja Mac."

"Maharaja Mac...what do they call a Whopper?"

"I dunno, man; didn't go to Burger King."

Being Americans, what's the first thing we do when we go to the capital city of a far-away country? Go to McDonalds. We aren't the only ones with that idea, either. The majority of the customers looked distinctly American. Water buffalo burgers are a little odd, but the fries are exactly the same.

Delhi is two cities, actually. There's the old city (Delhi proper) and the new city (New Delhi, cleverly enough). We were mostly in the new city, which looked as though it could be in the Bay Area, if you ignore the occasional camel. The streets were broad and well-maintained with green median strips and banner ads for high-tech companies. Oh, and most of the people are Asian. We stayed at the Claridges hotel, an establishment that played heavily to the colonial past, with Victorian engravings on every wall and lovely ravens in every room (or perhaps they were writing desks; Antone and I were confused on that point through the entire trip. Antone also braved the New Delhi night in search of a good dictionary, which he found.

During our brief stay, we saw the big government buildings and a few ancient monuments. The most interesting was Qutb Minar, a mosque with a very, very, very tall minaret. To give some idea of scale, those column-and-lintel deals at the bottom of the picture are about ten feet tall.

The Qutb Minar complex is home to the famous Iron Pillar, a black iron pillar which has stood for close to 2000 years without rusting away due to the purity of the metal. I got a picture, but it's not a terribly interesting object. What I did find particularly captivating was the elaborate decoration on every surface, Qur'anic passages and elaborate floral motifs.


There were also a number of vividly green parakeets. It was a little weird not seeing such birds inside somebody's house, but I suppose they have to live in the wild somewhere.