A Bit More to Goa

Okay, I might have exaggerated slightly the strangeness of the tour we took on Monday before flying back to Delhi. A fellow intern had read about this mansion:
Which, strangely, we spent hours in, only to be told later that it had burned down 90 years ago.

When we went in, there were two doors at the top of the stairs. On the right was a man, and on the left was a woman, and each hastily pressured us to go in his/her respective door. We went right first, with the man, who turned out not to be entirely...lucid. As he told us, he does not drink or smoke, you see, but by that he means he does not smoke cigarettes, and han...hnam....hanama....nhanh (this is how much of the tour sounded, as our new friend's head would loll further and further to the side). He did convey, I think, that the house was built in the 16th century, and that we could take pictures.



When we came back out to the top of the stairs, the lady from the other side ushered us into her half of the house. She was very delicate-seeming somehow, and, we would soon learn, 95 years old. It turned out photography was not allowed on this side of the house, but this wasn't mentioned until the tour was over and we had taken many many pictures. Halfway through, the slightly sprier, standard tour guide came out and told us about the wealthy family that owns the house and actually still lives in it (and there is a slight rivalry between two adjoining houses built by two brothers). Apparently their wealth got redistributed at some point, however, hence why they had been forced to open the house to riffraff like us.
After this, we all made it to the airport and headed back to Delhi. It was really smooth, easy traveling, and I highly recommend Indigo Airlines. But then I spent the evening combing the markets unsuccessfully for a yoga mat...they do not grow on trees here, it turns out.

This past week has been pretty uneventful. I work, in theory, from 9:30 to 6:30, yet can't seem to get to the office before 10:00 (as seems to be the office-wide trend). Lengthy lunch breaks are also taken--no complaints here. I've decided to move in two weeks to the neighborhood where I work because (a) I'm paying a ridiculous amount of rent (b) the commute, aka, breathing in bus exhaust for 20 minutes, is not so good for the ol' asthma and (c) that neighborhood is totally cooler. The landlady was very displeased when I told her this just now, but we didn't have a contract, did we?? I'm wracked with guilt, but also not.