An Assault On The Senses
Trip Start
Mar 30, 2010
1
69
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Trip End
Jul 22, 2011
New Delhi, India
Thursday, July 7, 2011
We woke up the next day to a nice Indian brekkie of parantha and curd (kind of potato pancake and yoghurt) and agreed on having a driver for the day as we needed to get to the train station to try and get our onward journeys sorted out and we were told that New Delhi station is a bit of a gauntlet. Our driver took us to the area of the station that we needed and we managed to get sorted with tourist quota tickets as all of the trains that we wanted were already fully booked. The first thing that really hit us about Delhi was the smells, mostly disgusting ones. The city is extremely over populated and so hundreds of thousands of people live on the street and so every part of the city can also double up as a toilet. The noise was definitely the second thing to hit us. Now we have been to some crazy driving countries on this trip but this is extreme. A very loud horn and an accelerator seem to be all that's required. Anyway, our guy was accustomed to the local road rules (i.e. there are no road rules) and navigated us through the heaving traffic for the rest of the day. We went to some of the sights like the place that Gandhi lived and died, some old religious buildings called Qutb Minar and the very lovely tomb of Himuyan which is made of red sandstone and white marble and had some gorgeous, quiet gardens to walk around. We were of great interest to the Indians at the sights, not only the sellers but also all of the Indian tourists who were taking constant, not so discreet, covert pictures of the weird, tall, fair westerners.
We had some very good curries on the first day with some lovely Thali’s on Connaught Place for lunch and then some very good curry in a bar in Peharganj washed down with some beers (quite a rarity in Delhi) in the evening where we’d asked the driver to drop us. This area is near the station and is pretty crazy. You have to constantly look around for cars, motorbikes, rickshaws, dogs, cows, touts plus everyone else.
Feeling much braver and having got our bearings we set off by ourselves on the second day and used the Metro all day which is beautifully air conditioned and doesn’t hit traffic. Of course there is real poverty everywhere you go and the desperation shown by some of the autorickshaw drivers is quite intense when they are following you down the street and will not take no for an answer. We were doing the sights of Old Delhi including the Red Fort and Jama Masjid which is an enormous Mosque that can hold 25,000 people. The area of Old Delhi is unbelievable. Walking from the Metro station down Chandni Chowk towards the Red Fort is an eye opener. There’s homeless people everywhere, huge piles of rotting rubbish, little food stalls, people selling everything – we felt exhausted by the time we got there but it was nice to have a bit of peace inside the Fort. As with a lot of places in Delhi, there was a guy with a machine gun pointing at you as you walk in to the fort. We had a nice walk around just before the rain set in and did all of the usual polite posing for people’s pictures. After a muddy walk to Jama Masjid we headed for lunch at a Delhi institution, Karim’s and had some delicious chicken burra and curry and naan.
In the evening we visited the much quieter area of town where the Parliament buildings are and also India Gate where a lot of locals like to hang out at sunset.
Sunday morning was time to say goodbye to our luxury room and get on the train for a three hour trip to Agra. We did nearly miss it even having arrived 50 mins early as we didn’t realise the train we were stood next to was ours, and despite India Rail being the World’s largest employer we couldn’t find anyone to ask!!!!!!!!!!!!
