mission to the state bank of india for my currency exchange was successful. my 75 USD worked out to something like 3400 Rupees (Rs-3400). to put this in perspective, at the dining hall i can get a very filling meal of 1 chapati, 1 heaping mound of lemon rice, 2 small servings of miscellaneous veg curry, 1 small dish of yogurt, and a 1 L bottle of water for Rs-30 (significantly less than 1 USD). since i only buy 1 L of water a day, i only end up spending about Rs-60 on eating per day. this also includes 2 coffee breaks and a breakfast snack/sandwich. even when we ate out last night (more on that to follow), the HUGE meal for 4 of us, including bottled water, lassi, and coffee, came to about Rs-480. eating in India is incredibly cheap! this means more Rupees leftover to buy gifts...
on a side note, despite my being a relatively intelligent person, i am continually amazed by my tendency to do fundamentally stupid things. before i left my room this morning, knowing FULLY that i was going to head to the bank to exchange my currency, i decided that it would be better to leave my passport locked in my suitcase, locked in my closet, and locked in my room than to carry it around with me in my bag (as i had been doing for the last couple of days). several of you probably know that i also brought several COPIES of my passport with me to India (one for each piece of luggage) but for some reason i neglected to transfer one of these copies to my bag. and of course, when i arrived at the foreign currency exchange counter to get my rupees, the first thing the teller asked for was MY PASSPORT or EVEN JUST A COPY of my passport. she was wielding the iron fist on the requirement, but the teller next door overheard my pleas, and saw me pulling out multiple pieces of canadian photo ID, and she let me off after taking a copy of my driver's license. with a promise to bring my passport tomorrow. sigh. i suppose next time i'll know.
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