Arrived at midnight and spent some time finding the driver that Lovely Sharma sent to pick me up. Drove all the way from Delhi to Agra manouvering through pot holes, police road bloacks and happy fat cows on the road. Arrived at the hotel Vikram Palace where I was to be staying but they'd managed to give my room away... butafter a bit of hustling on behalf on my taxi driver (a good one!) they managed to evacuate someone and I got a bed for a few hours.
Got picked up at 9am by lovely Sharma and two of the guest presenters, one with a doctorate in Indian Ayurvedic singing and the other in sitar. The symposium was a great success. People had flown from all over India to attend and there is great enthusiasm to build up music therapy in India particularly using the incredibly strong healing traditions of classical indian music and the ragas.
Met Debasis, my friend Sam's tabla teacher, who had helped Lovely organise the event. Went out to dinner with his family and Lovely Sharma and her son and a colleague and all were very impressed I coped with the spicey food... and even had two servings of pickle!
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