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Published: January 15th 2007
Apologies for leaving these blogs until three weeks after i leave the place that i'm writing on- i really need to get better at that. I Haven't written in my own journal in a fair while either. I'd hope that this doesn't reflect the fact that the little things about India are not as appealing as they used to be, although I do think that being around them for over a month now makes everyhting seem a lot more tame. Oh well.
Anyway, we're in Delhi now for the second time and we're about to leave. My impressions of this place are fairly good- i like Delhi. Why? People seem to always complain that the place is just big and noisy with no real tourist sights to compensate- i disagree. It is big and noisy here, but i've actually come to like this in an Indian city. Don't get me wrong, I love kicking back in the smaller places like Bodhgaya, Darjeeling or Rishikesh, but there is indeed something to be said for the city life over here. It is nice to have an endless amount of restaraunts to eat at, an abundance of new travellers to meet, and enough
Inside Red Fort
Pillars in the once great audience hallstreets to effortlessly get lost. I guess (similar to Kolkata) this is the appeal that Delhi holds for me.
The tourist centre is the Main Bazaar rd of the area called Paharganj. This is where you see all of the hotels and touts on the streets. The markets that line the streets cater to the demands of the Western tourists- crapy jewellry and very 'Indian' miniskirts- and the sellers who occupy them are well versed in English and the bargaining tricks to deal with the many travellers for whom Delhi is the first stop.
Our time here has been cut in two- firstly, we arrived with Nick after Agra and enjoyed four days of sightseeing. This is not exactly Delhi's strongpoint. Our first day was spent in the market which we never really found in Old Delhi, or that is we did actually find it but it never really had the feel of a market because it was so segregated and all over the place (fyi- best market in India so far was easily Newmarket in Kolkata, everything was under the one roof- the way a market should be for mine). We stumbled upon the biggest Mosque in
Delhi sun
The plus side off over-pollution India (Jama Masjid), and had a look inside. This was nice and big, huge pillars and a great big open square for prayers. We paid the forty rupees to climb the minar on the side of the Mosque and were treated to the best view of the city in Delhi. It's funny to think that there are still no buildings that are higher than the 700 year old Mosque. The view was of never ending and relativly indistinguishable city land that ended only after the layers of smog cut out view. It was good to get an impression of the scope of the city and a nice view of red fort as well.
The next day we hit the Mughal Rad Fort. Basically, we found this to be a bit of a let down. The view from outside the line trying to get in gave better views of the big red walls were better than anything inside, only a couple of old buildings and courtyards remain and many of them were actually remnants of the British Colonial era rather than the Mughal Dynasty. The funny thing was that just like Agra fort, the area of the place was so
massive, yet it seemed like we were only allowed to see about 20% of it. The back wall facing onto the river wasn't even intact anymore- replaced by a much smarter looking freeway. I suppose i am becoming a bit picky after seeing three of these kinds of forts already. Luckily I've got about 50 still to see in Rajasthan.
Our last day in this first stint vrought us back to the markets, this time just the ones on Main Bazaar outside our hotel. It was here, only a couple of days ago that we ordered a couple of suits to be taylored. Chris chose a tan linen colour and plain black, Nick went with the more conservative black, black w/pinstripe and blue w/pinstripe. I on the other hand chose a shade of brown that can only be described as chocotastic. The others didn't really think so much of my selection (what were they thinking?) but i'll be laughing when the brown suit is the look of 2007, which I believe it will.
It was easy to feel at home in Delhi, so many people shouting out after you and asking where we're from. It also proved to
be a nice vantage point to watch the Perth test of the Ashes, which as we all know, is more important than seeing India. After nick crept out at 5am to go to the airport, we got on our train to Haridwar an hour later. (see my blog on Uttaranchal and Rishikesh that should be completed in about six months).
***
The trip from Dehra Dun the most painful train journey of the trip so far. Nine hours to complete 200km on a train that averaged over 100km/h when it decided to move. The comic value of this slowness and our jokes about its reflection of India stopped compensating for the trains lateness at around hour five. The remaining four were occupied with the disbelief of seeing yet another patch of sugar cane after seeing 20 minutes of city that we were sure was the outskirts of Delhi. We later found out that the train was so late because the tracks were only one way and we had to wait everytime another train was coming the other way. Normaly we'd have a laugh at this, not after nine hours.
We left New Delhi station with relief. This
was of course, the 31ts, we had come back to Delhi specificaly for New Years (which would have been fairly quiet in Rishikesh), the only problem was that we only really knew of one other person who would be in the city- Hannah, who we ran into in Agra. The next afternoon and evening was one for the boks as far as New Years goes. As we walked through Pahar Ganj, we met our first new friend- a Melbourne uni student like us who was also looking for something to do. We then ate lunch at Sonu's restaraunt, where we met another couple with the same intention and problem as us. Later on at the Taylor, we met an English guy who quite rudely interupted our Cricket insults to ask us of our plans for the night. Later on we met up with Hannah who had brought with her three other girls, one American and two Aussies. In the space of a few hours, our New Years group went from three to ten. We all ate together at a rooftop restaraunt near our hotel and made way for Connaught Place, the only real (by default) centre of the city, where
Outside Red Fort
The view from the line to get in was about as good as anything inside it was said festivities would occur. We all jumped in cycle rickshaws that soon became chariots, and wandered around the streets looking for a place to go. The only places were crappy clubs that were charging A$80 for each of us. This led us to the belief that we were better off wandering around the main road and seeing what happened. This turned out to be quite an experience. As usual, the Indian crowd (100% male) was intregued by our lack of Indianess enough to follow us around and form a sort of 'rent a mob' group. I was amazed at how easy it was to insite them into a real mob- everynow and then they'd watch us do something (like wave or say something) and feel an urg to repeat it to us. Our only option as we saw it was to do the same back to them.
This led to about 100 people shouting 'Sachin Tendulkar' and 'Ricky Ponting' in a mosh pit like atmosphere. It was absolutely hilarious, and very memorable. This feeling changed however when we realised that the real reason for these mobs was for the men to oggle and touch the girls in
Looking up at the Minar
The actual centre piece of Qutb Minar the group. It really stopped being funny when one of the girls was plainly assaulted by a collection of hands.
We decided to kick back to the Hotel and drink the beers that we had attained earlier. All twenty or so of us (by this stage we had accumulated some Irishmen and Belgians) walked the distance back to Pahar Ganj. We took some photos and added an impromtu countdown set to Chris' watch, which was probably more reliable than any official Indian count down anyway. The night turned out to be a lot of fun. We sayed drinking on our rooftop until the early hours of the morn. Like proud parents Chris and I looked over the collection of travellers we had gathered with a sense of relief that we had made something of a new years that we had thought would be crap. It's very true that the better ones are those that you enter with low expectations.
The next day was ok; having not actually drunken so much we didn't have the usual January 1st hang over. We went shopping again around Pahar Ganj with Hannah, we bought some t-shirts and other crap, not a bad day.
We had two days until Tristan, our next travelling partner arrived in Delhi, so we decided to do the one tourist sight that we had yet see in Delhi, the Mughal tower of Qutb Minar. This was actually quite good. We weren't as sick of tourist sights as we thought we'd be because we hadn't been to one in over a week. We took a few photos, marvelled at the sight of a mowed grass field (which only ever exist at tourist complexes) and headed off back to Pahar Ganj.
Our rickshaw to and from Qutb Minar was comletely free. No we did not pull a runner, we simply agreed to stop at a collection of crappy tourist emporium places from which our driver was paid commission on our arrival. I know i have written about how annoying this process can be, but we find that when you organise an agreement beforehand regarding how many shops you will stop at, it can be alright. We actually came to like our driver because he was completely open about how much he made at each place.
Back at Paharganj for the last day and then out to the airport that night. I was absolutely astonished at how successfully Delhi Airport made Kolkata Airport look like the heap of crap it was. Having seen Trix in, we made it back to Main Bazaar in time for a quick Choc Banana Dosa at Sonu's, a good way to say good bye to Delhi.
The next morning saw us sitting on a train at 5 something in the morning- insane. We were going to Pushkar to start our trip in Rajasthan.
I like Delhi. If I was one of those wankers that was completely anti-tourist (even though i am to a brief extent) I probably wouldn't have. It was a good place to meet people, certainly a good place for New Years.
Next up is Rajasthan, we're heading to Pushkar before Jaipur in the hope of running into an old teacher on the 9th.
If there is anyone good enough to leave a comment on this page after reading it, i would appreciate- please!
Peace,
Sam
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Mossie
Tristan Moss
Blogs are better with waiting
Good blog Sammy. Its good to see the photos of the stories I've been hearing all the time I've been here. I hope there is more blogs, more often after this one. Also, for anyone interested, I thought I would include a shameless plug for my own blog here - look up www.travelblog.org/bloggers/mossie Tristan