We had good experiences with the government-run ITDC sightseeing tours as well as with hired guides. I cringe saying that, because I have always disdained the busloads of ogling camera hounds that infest Fisherman's Wharf and other tourist spots. But when you don't have much time, a bus and a guide make a great crash course in local history and culture.

If you go sightseeing in India, wear shoes that are easy to get in and out of, and take a lot of socks. You have to unshoe before entering a temple, and there are many, many temples.

India has great food, spicy and rich. We got stuck in a culinary rut. Our standard meal was mutter paneer (peas and cheese), aloo gobhi (potatoes and cauliflower) or dum aloo (curried potatoes), plain rice and plain nan (fluffy flatbread). We ordered the same dishes at different places, and they were always delicious.

I have to mention Croissants, Etc. in New Delhi, because it is so out-of-place and so nice to find when you are tired of Indian food. They have a curry-filled croissant that we are sure will be the next big thing in Palo Alto. I also tried the veggie burger at Wimpy's because I have this suicidal urge to sample fast food in out-of-the-way places. It was mediocre. But then I wouldn't expect a burger joint to do more than just get by in a Hindu country.

If you are going to India, take a good book. Things take longer here. Your flight is delayed, and they can't tell you when it will arrive. You dial a telephone; you wait for a connection; the connection doesn't go through; you dial again. You stand in line at the bank. Nobody pays you any notice. You go to another bank.

Another thing that takes getting used to is queuing; sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes people just crowd around a counter or window or person, waving their papers or barking their request until they get noticed. Other times they stand in line and wait their turn. The worst is when a queue deteriorates into a non-queue; this started to happen at a check- in counter we were at, and the airline officials did nothing. The only thing I can say for the non-queue is that it saves space.

In India, the OK sign is what some call the head waggle, the head wiggle, or the figure-8 with the head. It's what happens if you try to nod and shake your head at the same time. It indicates a neutral acceptance of whatever's at issue. Each person does it a bit differently. A highly stylized head waggle is something to see.

Baksheesh can be a handout, a tip, or a bribe. You usually have to guess the right amount, and you judge how close you came from the recipient's reaction. Haggling is a game you play with market vendors and taxi drivers to arrive at a price. Here not only do you have to guess the right amount, but also the avenue for getting there, that is, the opening bid and the number of counter-bids. I am no good at guessing games. I could have saved a lot of money if I had the patience and the poker face, but I always backslide and give someone what they say they want.

There are a lot of people in India, so every bit of space gets used. The same rule applies to traffic. What I think of as a safe braking distance is wasted space in India. Lane dividers are purely decorative. If your vehicle can fit in a space, you move to occupy it. In case of a tie, the bigger vehicle wins.

What makes traffic exciting is the variety of objects competing for road space: immovable obstacles, like piles of bricks; cows, usually stationary; elephants and/or camels, depending on where you are; ox carts; pedestrians; bicycles and bicycle rickshaws; motor scooters; motorcycles; auto rickshaws*; cars, big and small; trucks; minibuses and buses. All of these are moving at different speeds, passing one another and going through roundabouts (traffic circles). There are few traffic signals in New Delhi relative to the amount of traffic, and only about half of them seem to functioning. There are traffic police, but their signs are more evident than their people. I saw a Delhi Traffic Police booth laying on its side in the middle of an intersection--that about sums it up.

* An auto rickshaw is the same size and shape as a metermaid cart. Behind the driver is a bench that seats two, covered by a vinyl canopy but open on the sides and sometimes in back as well. The front is basically a motor scooter. The driver steers with handlebars.

Indian drivers use horns in lieu of any other signaling device, so even a small amount of traffic is noisy. But when it seems to my American ears that everyone is yelling "Outta my way!" at each other, what they really mean is more likely "I'm in your blind spot" or "I'm passing you, let me by" or "go ahead and pass already." Trucks and other slow-moving vehicles have "Please Use Horn" painted on their bumpers, along with greetings such as the apropos "Good Luck." It takes a while to understand that no one is honking because they are mad; drivers are in fact remarkably cool considering what they have to contend with.

The accepted method of driving on a 2-lane highway is to go wherever necessary to overtake slower vehicles (people, cows, etc.), braking only if there is an oncoming vehicle. Indian drivers are masters of the close shave, relying on both the oncoming vehicle and the one they are passing to allow them back into their lane.

Tata manufactures many of the trucks and buses in India. You can see their logo, which is mounted on the front grille, at eye level when the driver of your tiny car plays chicken with a mammoth truck. The truck seems to shout, "Ta-ta! Kiss your ass goodbye!".

India's pop music borrows a lot from the west, but the result is still distinctly Indian. The hit singles layer high, nasal vocals and jangly percussion over a disco beat. They have MTV-style music videos, complete with the Valley-girl announcer. Considering that most women don't bare knees or shoulders in public, the videos are incredibly risque. Dancers mix hip-hop moves with belly dancing.

This country could benefit from a massive infusion of trash bins. There aren't any on the street, so people litter. It's ugly, but at least it's dry. Cows and other animals roam the streets, and no one's going after them with a poop scoop. Male humans also relieve themselves (#1) in alleys and at roadsides. People chew paan (a betel nut preparation) and spit out the red juice on the pavement. Or they just spit. And there are open sewers in many places, especially in the smaller towns. The total effect is that public places tend to be dirty and smelly. You have to watch your step and not follow anyone too closely.

India is predominantly Hindu, although Muslims, Jains, Sikhs, and Buddhists exist in significant numbers. Hinduism is a philosophy of life, and it's woven closely into Indian culture. In the west, we have separation of church and state, and of religion and life. But there's no separation in India.

Hinduism encompasses many deities, great and small, and consequently it has many holy days and festivals, and temples of all varieties. And in contrast to the somber trappings of some religions, Hindu religious paraphernalia is colorful and elaborate. You see bright orange clumps of marigolds, fire-engine red paste for blessing worshippers, silver tinsel garlands, and blue-skinned gods. Heady incense and perfume top off the sensory overload.

There is still a caste system in India. Not officially, but people still put a lot of stock in your pedigree, or at least what it appears to be. My three-week whirlwind tour isn't nearly enough for me to understand what's going on, but it would be easier to tolerate the neediness you see everywhere if you thought it was fate, that the poor were born to be poor. They say that the middle class in growing, but I don't know if it is pulling people out of the lower class or the upper.

In India, public phones occupy entire storefronts, not just booths. You go in and tell the attendant where you want to call, and he or she directs you to a phone.

The first problem in calling the US is finding a phone that can call outside of India. Not all phones can connect internationally, but public phones are common enough and are easy to spot with their "STD/ISD" signs.

If you don't want to drop wads of cash paying for a direct call, the second problem is finding a phone that allows you to connect to an overseas operator. I had the access number for AT&T, which would allow me to make collect calls, but I could only call that number from New Delhi, Bombay, and Calcutta.

Once you are in one of those three cities, the third problem is convincing the phone vendor not to charge you for a collect call. In New Delhi, I called collect from a public phone. After my call, the attendant was astounded that the bill was only 10 rupees. I had to explain that the charges were reversed, and he skeptically accepted.

If you want to run up your own phone bill instead of your sister's, the fourth problem is reaching your own long-distance company. Phone vendors only seem to know about AT&T. I didn't know the MCI access number. It was three weeks before I got the number, just by chance, from some ex-MCI employees I met. Once I had the MCI access number, I had trouble finding a phone from which I could call that number. At the first place I tried, I reached an MCI operator, but some alarm went off, and the attendant told me I couldn't call that number. At another place, I reached an MCI operator, gave her my account number, and put through a call just exactly the way I had imagined I'd be doing all along. But the next time I went back to the same phone vendor, the same phone even, I got a recorded message telling me that I could not place this call from this phone. The attendant was mystified, and so was I.

From then on I would wander from phone shop to phone shop trying to reach an MCI operator, but finally end up calling collect via AT&T; it was the only commonly accessible method that didn't deplete my cash supply.

Many of my phone conversations seemed a bit strange, and it took me a while to realize that it was because of the delay, perhaps just a few fractions of a second, for one person's voice to reach the earpiece on the other end. It creates these uneasy silences in which you feel as though the other person is hesitating when they are actually responding normally.

Towards the end of the trip, I saw a lot of Europeans sending and receiving faxes. Fax, I've decided, is the optimal method for staying in touch. It's widely available, not too expensive, and you don't get answering machines. You don't burn rupees thinking about what you need to say either. But it's hard to have a two-way exchange.

Cows are smug in India, smug and happy, happy to be Hindu. You'll see one sitting right in the middle of the road, lazy and contented. She knows that a car may come within inches of her hide, but it will never hit her. Its driver will honk away, and she'll ignore it or get up so slowly that you know she's enjoying it. I don't know what would happen if you hurt a cow in India--a riot, an earthquake, a bolt of lightning. It just doesn't happen.

I saw a lot of unhealthy stray dogs. Most of them were lying on their side in the road, oblivious to the traffic, looking nearly dead, and maybe they were. I saw almost no cats, stray or otherwise. I was told that Indians don't like cats because "they are self-centered and disloyal." The few I saw were skinny little strays. Rhesus monkeys (yellow with red faces and red butts) are as common as squirrels in some places, and like squirrels they aren't afraid of humans and will scold you.

Using a squat toilet takes some getting used to. I had heard it described as "a hole in the ground" but it's not quite that primitive. I would call it a sunken toilet bowl. It's the same white porcelain receptacle we know and love, but recessed into the floor, with a white porcelain block embedded in the floor on either side to show where to place your feet for optimal results. Over time you build up the thigh muscles that allow you to hold this low squatting position as long as necessary. In the beginning it's awkward, but you have a lot of motivation to fine-tune your technique. The first thing I discovered, which I really didn't care to know, is that I don't pee straight; I have a slight error to the left, which gets bigger the farther the urine has to travel. So I quickly learned to squat low.

Most toilets feature a tap near the floor and a cup; in rural areas, it may be just a bucket of water. If you're Indian, you use your left hand and some water to accomplish what an American does with toilet paper. If you're polite, you also wash down the whole area in and around the toilet to make it presentable for the next person. So a toilet stall is often quite wet when you enter, but you can't tell why. You just step carefully and don't think too hard about it.

Our hotel rooms had western-style sit-down toilets, so my squat-toilet experiences occurred when we were on the move, as we often were. Occasionally we would encounter a sit-down toilet at an upscale restaurant, and I would linger there just to appreciate the difference.

All of the hotels we stayed in had showers, and most provided a ten-gallon bucket, too. I opted for the bucket on several occasions when the shower was too feeble. I have learned how to wash my whole body in a single bucket of water, which is a handy skill to have when hot water is in short supply. In many places, the shower area was not separated --the entire bathroom served as the shower stall.

In my dim memories of western-style bathrooms, they seem like extravagant palaces.

I went to India and didn't get diarrhea. That's like saying I went to India and didn't see the Taj Mahal; it's unusual. I took precautions, but I also took chances, usually for no good reason. I even drank from the same bottle as someone who was having the runs at the time, and nothing happened to me. I'm going to donate my intestines to science.

To make up for it, however, I had a head cold that lasted three weeks. You could see me on sightseeing tours clutching my roll of toilet paper. Normally I try to breathe steam when I have a cold, but this time I went to the desert to breathe hot, dry, dusty air instead. So I didn't get well until I returned to the polluted but humid atmosphere of New Delhi. I also got some unusual skin rashes, possibly allergic reactions or prickly heat. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, they are located in non-public areas of my body. I haven't had rashes like these since before I could walk. They are slowly fading, but I still look like a map of Micronesia. This is riveting, I know.

My first impression of New Delhi, as I arrived in the middle of the night and went by car through the dark and deserted streets, was that it wasn't as different as I had expected. It was the color of eastern Europe before the wall came down, which is no particular color at all. Buildings were institutional concrete blocks. There were paved streets, electric lights, automobiles-- not my picture of the third world at all. Except for the occasional cow, it looked a lot like the less desirable parts of New York City.

We took the express train to Gwalior, in the deluxe seats that Mrs. Sanyal had booked for us--no crowds, and they served us bottled water and a hot meal. We hadn't planned to go to Gwalior. Nobody plans to go to Gwalior. It was on the way, and Abhinav, the guy who does all the legwork for Mrs. Sanyal, went to school there. It's a sizable working-class town with some industries, but tourism is not one of them. So we didn't get hassled by touts, but we got stared at a lot. We were the only women for miles around wearing western clothes.

At the Sun temple, Anita was chatted up by a nice-looking, polite young man, who asked a lot of questions about the US and about how a person from India might get to the US, and before long he was asking Anita whether she'd marry him. He made no pretensions about his motive, and he wasn't pushy at all, so I was almost sorry that Anita turned him down.

In Gwalior, as in many of the towns we visited, there is a fort, the ruined vestige of an older city from an older empire. We were adopted there by a little entrepreneur who was maybe ten years old. He offered to be our guide, and at first we brushed him off as we were doing out of habit by then, but he stuck with us, pointing things out to us, and pretty soon we were following him around. We paid him at the end. He was willing to work for a buck while other children were asking for handouts.

From Khajuraho we flew to Varanasi for the do-it-yourself portion of our holiday, the part not booked in advance by Mrs. Sanyal. My friends Fran, Tova, Bev, and Nonnie were at the Women and Water conference in Varanasi, and we planned meet them there. We checked into the Hotel de Paris, which occupies the former guesthouse of a maharaja. It's palatial and run-down at the same time. We got a huge room that was half empty. The hotel is located far from the center of town, a feature we would come to appreciate.

Before I left the US, I told Tova that I'd call her when I reached Varanasi, but she said to go to Tulsi Ghat and just ask around. She gave me this look that I didn't understand then, because it didn't occur to me that they wouldn't be reachable by phone. But at the hotel, when I asked about the Sankat Mochan Foundation, one of the sponsoring organizations of the conference, people were baffled. "Phone book" and "directory assistance" were met with blank stares. We were sent on a wild goose chase to Sankat Mochan Temple, and went to the next level of culture shock.

Varanasi is very, very crowded, like New Delhi would be if you shrank all the roadways in half without scaling anything else. There is no breathing room between the street and the buildings; the distinction between indoors and outdoors is blurred. Our auto rickshaw would come within inches of a cooking fire, a stack of potatoes, some chickens. I bumped my knee on the back of a cow, and my knee was inside the rickshaw. This was on a major thoroughfare; most streets are only wide enough for foot traffic.

After going to the temple and finding no one who spoke English, we retreated to the urban-planning paradise of our hotel's neighborhood. The next day we went to Tulsi Ghat to ask around, like Tova had said. Getting there was an adventure in itself. Our driver wove through the crowded streets for a while, then parked and motioned for us to follow him down a street that was too narrow to drive through. "Street" is too generous a term really; we're talking about the space between two buildings, just wide enough for two people to pass. Yet here, as everywhere, street vendors set up their pile of goods on the ground and squat next to it, waiting for customers. We walked for ten minutes or so in a claustrophobic maze, then the street opened up, and there was the river.

The Ganges River, or Ganga, is the center of life in Varanasi. Wide stairways like bleachers descend from the buildings down to the water's edge. They are called ghats, and Varanasi has nearly a hundred spaced along the west bank of the river. Every day thousands of people walk down the ghats to bathe in the holy water. In this same water they also wash clothes and dump sewage. It's a spectacle, but not a pretty one. The state of the Ganga is one of the reasons for the Women and Water conference, which we had yet to find. We got on a boat for a short ride down river to Tulsi Ghat, where, sure enough, we asked around and found the women.

I had that disjointed feeling that comes from seeing familiar faces in unfamiliar surroundings. It was strange but reassuring to hear voices I knew amongst the Hindi-accented English I'd become more used to hearing. And in their stories were some of the same experiences and reactions that we had had.

Our taxi driver in Varanasi adopted us. Though he spoke very little English, I gathered he didn't think two women should be out unescorted after dark. So he would ferry us back and forth across town, driving through all kinds of impossible conditions, trying various routes to Tulsi Ghat, all of them difficult, and waiting for us while we had dinner with our friends.

Anita and I had planned to take the train to Rishikesh with some of the women, to see the headwaters of the Ganga, but we discovered that would entail a 24-hour train ride that neither of us was game for. Instead we chose to fly to Agra and meet them in Rishikesh later. Getting a plane out of Varanasi cost us a lot, because we had to pay baksheesh to several people, but we didn't have any more creative way of getting out.

Everyone goes to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. There are other worthy sights in Agra, but the Taj Mahal dwarfs them all. The bulbous image that you see in all the photos is just the centerpiece of a large complex that encompasses three massive gates, an expansive garden, a reflecting pool, and the mosque and palace that flank the Taj. The setting only enhances the magnificence of the main building. From every direction that you approach it, the Taj seems to get larger and yet lighter and more translucent. I don't know which is more impressive, the architectural design or the precision with which it was executed.

Coming back to New Delhi was coming home, seeing places we'd been before, walking around like we lived here. It meant getting cash advances on Visa. It meant dialing up an AT&T operator. It meant going to a supermarket and buying multiple unrelated items in one trip. It meant having Mrs. Sanyal arrange our transportation and lodging. Mrs. Singh's flat, which had seemed just adequate before, looked roomy and plush.

We hired a car to Rishikesh, which didn't make sense because there's a train, but we wanted to leave right away. The drive took us through the outskirts of Delhi, past high-rise after industrial high-rise, which could have been in New York City except for the 10-foot saris hanging out to dry from every balcony. Next came a flat procession of factory towns, all owned by the Modi family: Modi tires, Modi sugar, Modi mills, Modi steel. And in and amongst them, fields of sugar cane. It was harvest time, and our progress was interrupted time after time by a lumbering truck weighed down with sugar cane.

Came back. Did laundry. Ran errands. Ate croissants. Just like home.

The drive to Udaipur reminded me a lot of California. Maybe I was homesick, but it looked like the same golden rolling hills and winding roads that you'd see in the Carmel valley. And Udaipur looked like San Francisco, its narrow hilly streets spilling down to the water, in this case a large lake. From our hotel, you could see the two island palaces, one of which is now the exclusive Lake Palace hotel. You could also see the City Palace on the lakeshore, which houses a museum and two exclusive hotels. And a 90-minute drive from the city, on a high hill, you could see the Monsoon Palace, which has no hotel. At night, all of the palaces are illuminated, giving a sparkling, romantic atmosphere to the whole place.

There is much to see and do in Udaipur, but because of my cold, we only toured the City Palace museum and took a boat ride around the lake. We were kind of templed out by this point anyway, and our hotel was the best yet: a white marble mansion with a breezy rooftop restaurant and a view of the lake from our room. The only sounds were children playing, dishwashing, and the mixed medley of American pop from a half dozen neighboring hotels. I spent many quiet moments blowing my nose in this balmy atmosphere.

We went to a performance of Rajasthani folk dance in Udaipur. It was pretty ho-hum except for the finale, a woman who danced with a stack of pots on her head, working up to about twelve of them. But wait, there's more: the stack of pots was balanced on a steel tumbler, the kind you mix a martini in. And she danced on top of two drinking glasses. And then over a pile of broken glass. And then on the upturned blades of three swords. Carrying a lighted candle in each hand. Carrying a sword with a plate spinning on its tip in each hand. Throughout the performance, her expression was fixed, a combination of fierce concentration, transcendent serenity, and a flicker of knowing that, when this was all over, she was going to knock back a cold beer.

We flew back to New Delhi and dropped Anita off at the international terminal for her 4 am flight to the US. I felt sort of deflated being left alone, to figure things out on my own, to not have someone to bounce ideas off of. Fortunately I was back in Delhi, which was a piece of cake now. And now I know the reason for all the good weather we had; it was Anita. It had rained the night before we arrived from the US, and it rained the day after Anita left, but in between we scarcely even saw a cloud. The thundershowers in Delhi were good for my cold; they gave me humidity and a reason to stay home. They also washed down the streets and cleaned out the air, and in the aftermath New Delhi almost looked habitable.

I opted to go to Rajaji National Park instead of the more famous Corbett National Park. The Corbett tour would have been on a bus with some thirty-odd people, which I thought made wildlife viewing highly unlikely. Rajaji borders Corbett to the west, so it has some of the same terrain and fauna. The operator for my tour had a campground north of Rishikesh, a short distance from the park, and ran a rafting business. I thought it would be a good idea to support this kind of wilderness enterprise, of which there are too few in India, but it wasn't cheap, and I had come to expect cheap. On the other hand, he didn't have a group or any other guests at the camp, so I was getting a personal wilderness tour for three days.

I loved the camp, called the Dhekali. It's a group of bamboo huts set on terraces on a steep hillside above the Ganga. I slept on an elevated platform under a thatch roof and moonlight, the sound of the river washing away my worries. In the morning I walked down to the river, a 15-minute stairclimb.

I had mixed feelings about my guide, Sanjay. He had a great fondness for this jungle, having grown up in nearby Hardwar, but he also had a defensiveness and a hotheadedness that I don't usually associate with nature lovers. And he didn't know much about the jungle ecosystem; he could point things out to me, but not tell me much about them. He was better at wildlife sighting, which is what I had signed up for after all. But I discovered that I was less into seeing particular animals--this wasn't a zoo anyway--and more into just being in the jungle.

My favorite part was the elephant ride. Animals don't run from elephants, so you can get closer than you can on foot or in a jeep. You don't cover ground very fast, but I didn't care. I liked the way the elephant plodded and lumbered, the way it snapped off branches of choice leaves with its trunk and chewed them as it went, the way it inhaled water and then shot it into its mouth. We saw spotted deer (cheetal), stags (sambir), wild boars, langur monkeys, and even a peacock showing off for the ladies. But they always fled when they got wind of us, so mostly we saw backsides.

After the safari, Sanjay didn't know what to do with me, so he offered to take me up to a hill above Rishikesh from which I'd be able to see the Himalayas. The recent rains had cleared the air and put new snow on the higher elevations. Then Sanjay came down with bad diarrhea, and there was no other driver, so he put me on the back of a motorbike with a 16-year old kid, who took me up the mountain.

At first I was repeating my India mantra ("Please let me die a natural death"), but once we got out of traffic and started to climb, it was fun. As we climbed, the terrain got steeper, and I could look down and see where we'd been. Small villages and terraced farms, the kind I would come to associate with Nepal, dotted the hillsides. We parked and climbed several hundred steps to reach the temple at the very top of the hill, and from the back of the temple, as advertised, you could see an expanse of white frozen mountains across the horizon. I spent a happy hour hiking the mule trails around the temple, testing out my fear of heights, and taking pictures.

On the ride down, we heard the rear tire going "rrrrr" on corners and saw that it was going flat. So the kid put me on a bus. My entire time in India I had managed not to ride a public bus, and here was my chance. I got a lot of stares, but no one bothered me. Then the driver told me to get off. It didn't look like Rishikesh, but he said "Shortcut" and motioned for me to follow the two guys who had gotten off ahead of me. So I'm following these guys down a trail, down the hill. One wears a suit and carries a briefcase of sorts; the other is your basic Delhi dude, baggy sweater, trousers, and flip-flops. The trails turns onto a dirt road which becomes a village street. I still have no idea where I am, when the suit goes one way and the Delhi dude goes the other. I'm standing there trying to figure out which one is less likely to be a psychotic killer, when the suit pipes up with the name of my destination. Relieved, I follow him into town.

Sanjay went to put me on a train to New Delhi, only to discover that train doesn't run on Tuesdays. So he and his travel agent friend took me to the bus station. They said, check out this bus and tell us if it's okay. The bus looked like a school bus that has seen too many field trips, and the clientele looked like they had slept in there all night even though the bus was just starting, But I wanted to get out of town, so I said okay. They looked at each other and said, we'll hire you a car. I guess I wasn't very convincing.

Best Lodging:

Mrs. Singh's. The shower was weak, and you had to flush the toilet just so, but she received us at 4 in the morning, and the neighborhood was great for buying necessities. Runner-up: Hotel Caravanserai in Udaipur. Great view of the lake, quiet neighborhood, lots of cool polished marble. Worst Lodging: Hotel Tansen in Gwalior. Roaches! and a mediocre restaurant. The Hotel Priya in Jaisalmer gets an honorable mention for highest ratio of employees to people working.

Modes of transportation we used:

Big plane, little plane, train, tour bus, big car, little car, auto rickshaw, bicycle rickshaw, rowboat, power boat, camel. I also used: local bus, motorbike, elephant.

What I missed:

Salad, Odwalla juice, sit-down toilets, cafe latte, cats, ATMs, directory assistance, email.

What I didn't miss:

Driving, working out, rain, balancing my checkbook, computers (except for email).

What I will miss:

Nan, masala chai, lassi, food in general, brilliant-colored saris, temples, elephants.

Number of times someone said, "Anita. That's a Hindi name?!" to Anita:

About the same as the population of New Delhi.

Number of times someone said, "Konnichi-wa" to Amy:

About the same.