New Delhi

---

The flight from Doha to New Delhi was only 3.5 hours, so I got in around 3:30am. I had the address to where I was going. The prepaid airport taxi service, run by the police was nice. You tell them where you're going, they give you a price, a the taxi takes you. A good idea, especially in a country where taxi drivers are notorious for trying to gouge tourists. At first the taxi driver seemed to know where he was going, but after a while, he started to look a little lost. As it turns out, an address in New Delhi doesn't seem to mean a whole lot. It can get you to the right area of town, but after that you seem to need to know where you're going to get there. To add to the situation, it turns out the place I was staying was not one of the nicest, or cleanest areas of Delhi, and Delhi in general is not the cleanest or nicest place. Also it was 4am and dark always adds another dimension to a dirty, smelly place; I was starting to wonder what I had gotten myself into. After the taxi driver asked a few people on the streets, I finally remembered I had kept the couchsurfing page with my host's phone number, so I my computer out. I hadn't been able to get an Indian simcard at the airport, but the driver pulled out his phone and called. After about 3 or 4 phone calls, and another 20-30 minutes of driving around, I finally got to my destination. To my relief, the place was nice. Maybe not the Western definition of nice, but a sketchy area of Delhi at 5am nice. I had no complaints. I was there and had a bed to sleep in.

I managed to get 5 or 6 hours of sleep, before I really met my hosts. It was an mum, and her daughter. The mum didn't speak any English, but the daughter spoke a little. Once I was awake, they phoned up their cousin, who spoke English well, and hosts a lot more couch surfers than they do. After some lunch and a bucket bath (a shower in your house is a luxury in India), I made for the new Swaminarayan Akshardham. I was built by a “socio-spiritual” NGO just a few years ago. It was built entirely by volunteers in just 5 years, which is incredible once you see it. Each one of the 300,000 sandstone bricks used in the complex was carved by hand, by various volunteer stones carvers in shops around the country and then shipped to Delhi to be placed. It took 300 million man-hours and 10,000+ volunteers to take the empty field to what it right now in 5 years. Quite a feat of project managing. To get in you can't bring a camera, phone, or anything electronic, no large purses and some other usual things. I knew this in advance, so to simplify things I left everything but my wallet at the house. This was the main reason for my adventures later that night.

Since it is free to get in, and it named after Bhagwan Swamarinarayan, one of the most important people in when it comes to Indian culture, it is popular with Indian tourists, and there are a lot of them. I only came across a handful of western tourists there. The wait to get in was an experience in itself. Imagine 1000+ bodies all in a confined space, in a humid 30ºC heat, with a handful of fans which don't make it all the way to the back of the queue. It wasn't the most pleasant experience ever, and my saving grace was that I was a good few inches taller than the majority of the crowd and was able to get a little air, especially if I stood on my toes. I couldn't imagine how hot some of the crowd were who were shorter than most. Every 15 minutes or so, they'd let a bit of the crowd through to the metal detectors and the crowd would suddenly lurch forward, while the crowd behind would push forward. A couple of times I nearly ran over a little kid or two. Once I finally got in, it was well worth the wait. Unfortunately, there were no cameras allowed, so no pictures were taken. Look it up on the internet, you should be able to find a few pictures.

It was free to get in, to wander around the grounds and to go inside the big temple. They also have a musical fountain show in the evening, at a cost of 30 Rs, and a 3-part exhibition hall for 150 Rs. When I was there, there was a minimum of a 1 hour wait for the exhibitions, which I was told would take around 2 hours to go through, which would have made me miss the musical fountain, which had already bought a ticket for. I'm not sure if it was because I was there on a Saturday, or if it was always such a long wait. Since the grounds are over 100 acres, it never seemed crowded, and was surprisingly quiet and peaceful considering it was in the middle of New Delhi. There was a souvenir and book shop, which I bought a few things from since the place was free, and canteen which only served vegetarian food. It is definitely the best thing to see in New Delhi. I ended up leaving a little after 9pm to catch the metro back to where I was staying. Everything was fine, until I got of the metro and realized I didn't know where to go from there.

Earlier my host's cousin had dropped me off at the metro station and I thought I had been paying attention, but I guess I hadn't been paying enough attention. I knew it wasn't too far away, down a main road with a fence down the meridian, and off to the right, but no specifics. I knew the address, or so I thought I did. Unfortunately, I was missing a key piece of information for it. I had the phone number on my mobile, which was at the house. I thought I had written it down and stuck in my wallet, but it was no where to be found. Here I am, in the middle of a fairly poor neighbourhood in New Delhi, with no way to contact my hosts, an incomplete address, and to top it off the internet cafés were closed and it was starting to get a little late. I had told my hosts that I would try and make it back for dinner, but that was not happening. I decided to walk around to see if anything caught my memory. After a while, and after many times that I thought I had found places which I remembered which ended up being false hope, I ended up asking a store owner if he could get me in the right direction. Without the complete address, it was fairly useless. A guy, around my age offered to drive me around on his moped to see if I could find anything that jogged my memory. I was a little hesitant but he seemed on the level so I hoped on. As he drove me around, he kept introducing me to his “friends”, most of which looked a little sketchy. After an hour or so of driving around in circles, I finally decided that it was about time I head to a police station, in hopes that they had a computer with internet, so I could find the phone number I needed. After a little more driving around, and a few more “introductions” he eventually dropped me off at the local police station. They said they had a computer hooked up to the internet, but after a ½ hour I was still just sitting there, so I starting thinking I might be spending the night. A little while later they fed me, and finally the supervisor showed up. Turns out the computer was in his office and they had to wait until he got back to the station. So there I was, at the police station, I got the phone number and the full address, a couple officers were going to drive me back, and then the truck wouldn't start. After a quick fix, we were off. And then they got lost. The area is so confusing that local police officers, with the right address, couldn't find the place. After a couple of phone calls to my hosts, who by now were getting worried as to where I was, I finally made it! I found out the next day that from the metro station it should have been a short 10 minute walk. That night it took me 3 hours.

After the first night, nothing too exciting happened while I was around New Delhi. The next day my host's cousin drove me around the city to see some of the other sights. I saw some temples, and some other buildings, nothing too much to write about. I took a bus trip down to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, that was pretty cool. I always thought that the Taj Mahal was a palace, turns out it's a massive mausoleum built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for Mumtaz Mahal, his third wife. Hence, there isn't much to see inside. During the hour or so that I was walking around there, a dozen or so people wanted their picture with me. I think it was the hat. After I had 4 or 5 requests, I decided for the rest of the trip every time someone asked me for a picture, I'd get one taken with my camera as well. I headed down to Jaipur one day, to see some of the palaces around there. Some were interesting, the weather was beautiful, and it was somewhere other than New Delhi. My last day in New Delhi was spend wandering the streets and markets of Old Delhi. You can find pretty much anything you could need on those streets, and plenty of things that you probably don't.

My epic 40-hour bus trip to Kathmandu came next, but that's a tale for another time.

---