Technically, Jeff and I are not in Bihar, but we're taking a glorious 5 days of vacation in Delhi in the midst of Jeff's 2.5 months at IDinsight in Bihar (and the start of my summer travels). I figure Delhi is close enough to resurrect our old blog...
Day 1 in Delhi was spent walking about 10 miles through beautiful parks and congested streets to eat and drink delicious things. We're staying in Hauz Khas, the only neighborhood I know in Delhi because it's the location of the J-PAL office and guest house. It's an ex-pat's dream: coffee shops, cafes and art galleries, oh my!
My three favorite parts of the day were: (1) having dinner with
Rashmi, our friend and former colleague who's still working for J-PAL South Asia; (2) drinking so many different delicious beverages (see future blog post); and (3) walking through Green Park (the focus of this post).
"Hauz Khas" means "Royal Water Tank," and the neighborhood is named for the reservoir at the center of Green Park, built in the 12th Century, and rightfully nicknamed the "Lungs of Delhi".
Jeff Weaver introduced me to the park 2 years ago on a J-PAL trip to Delhi. We entered the park at "Hauz Khas village," the most upscale, ex-pat-y part of the neighborhood, walking through 900-year-old ruins of tombs and mosques:
Of course, my favorite park of the park wasn't the ruins or even the peaceful scenery (which was remarkable - it felt like we'd completely left Delhi behind). My favorite part was the badly translated signs labeling an exercise circuit that we didn't see a single person using (besides us!).
Exercise 1: "Stradle Walk and Jump"
Exercise 2: "Jumping Jack"
Exercise 3: "Ring Exercise-Spine Shoulder, Hip-ETC"
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| Kind of tricky without the ring... |
And my personal favorite, Exercise 4: "Balance Spinal Exercise"
If there's a theme to my international travels, it seems to be the constant pursuit of bad English translations... as
Katharine and others know well :).
