"Welcome to the Jungle"

Human Jungle of Delhi

Delhi is the place where many first-time visitors to India experience the unavoidable cultural shock. We were no exception to this, arriving there after two futile weeks in strike-paralyzed Nepal and landing directly into a literally boiling city, where the average temperature was 40+C. Add this to the commotion, dirt and crowdedness of an Indian metropolitan and you get the picture. To make things worse, the backpackers guesthouses are concentrated in the dirty old central market (Main Bazaar), a unwelcoming place even in third-world standards. Hell, in short. It was amazing to realize that after spending quite some time there we felt totally different about it. Maybe that's the story of India itself - you begin by disgusting it but ends up adoring it (or take the first flight out, as many frightened visitors do).

An interesting phenomenon about traveling is the way you build your expectations from a place prior to visiting it. You gather information from guide books, speak with people who've already been there and use your imagination. The reality is sometimes quite different from what was expected. In Delhi we thought we'll have to jump over leprosy-bitten beggars in every street corner and be suffocated by the smells and fumes. There were sick beggars on the floor, but not as many as we thought, cows were freely wandering in the narrow allies and shitting all over the place, but the smells weren't that terrible and even the notorious auto-rickshaws were found to be operating on gas. Things weren't that bad after all.

Leaving Main-Bazaar to New-Delhi, the official capital, we were amazed by its beauty. Designed and constructed by the British from scratch in the beginning of the 20th century, it's a well-planned place with broad avenues, lots of gardens and parks and some spectacular monuments, both historic and modern.

The old city, north to New-Delhi is home to some fine historic buildings from the 16th and 17th centuries built by the Mughals - the Muslim rulers of India at that time, such as the Red Fort and the largest mosque in India - the awesome Jama Masjid. It was so cool to use the bike-rickshaw driven by its slim 'wala' (driver) and feel like you're being dragged into medieval times with all the views around. A very strong experience indeed. Old Delhi is one of the last places in the world you can still see things as they were 500 years ago and that had its impact on us.

At the same time, the city has its modernity, but it's less common than other third world cities in other parts of the world. You can find McDonald's, Pizza Hut and even fine coffee, but it's not as prevalent as elsewhere. The wealthier neighborhoods look very much like their parallels in the west world. We visited our friend's home, Raghav, and found it to be a beautiful place, reminding the Israeli Ramat Efal a bit. And the new Metro was found to be modern and efficient. A place of big contradictions, no doubt.

Finally, Delhi is the home-base for visiting the Taj Mahal, four hours away in the ex-capital Agra. It is considered by many experts as the best architectural creation ever built and we just had to agree. Although not big fans of architecture, we were stunned by its beauty. The shining marble and the perfect symmetry simply 'do the work'. The story behind it also contributes to the excitement from the place. It's actually a tomb built by Shah Jahan, the Mughal ruler, for his beloved wife who died during one of his campaigns. It took 20 years to complete using thousand elephants to carry the marble from Rajastan. The symmetry of the place is (almost) perfect, destructed only by Shah Jahan's grave itself which was put there by his son who putched him. A magnificent place and a 'must' for every visitor to India.

This is Delhi, a micro-cosmos of India - difficult and intriguing and the same time. We'll always have strong memories of it. The heat, the smells, the people, the atmosphere - all incomparable to nowhere else.















Entry Title: taken from Guns N' Roses song which was probably written after Axel Rose visited Delhi :-)

---

---