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Published: February 17th 2011
Delhi
02/02/11 - 04/02/11
Delhi has a problem with it's organised traffic system. It is at times literally impossible to cross the road. At some 'crossings', ie there are zebra lines there are no traffic lights and a constant stream of 7 lanes of traffic! The roads are well maintained and there are pavements (for once) but I gave up trying to cross them, even with other people. You can see they have maintained the roads, especially around Connaught Place for the Commonwealth games. There are some suitably modern subways dotted around though if you can find them. We found it is also quite hard to get back to our accommodation as it was one side of a fenced major road (a bit like a major A road in the UK). Which would mean it was fine going one way but we would have to go a very convoluted way to return!
Connaught Place has some modern, western style shops and a few restaurants dotted around. You have to go into the inner circle to find anything of interest and from what we could see at least a quarter of the circle did not have anything
in it. In the middle is a park which looks nicely maintained but we couldn't be bothered to cross the roads to get to it!!
The first day we were there we just wondered round the circle and then went to the recommended emporiums (in the LP). We didn't think that much of the area but we were tired from our overnight travel from Varanasi.
The next day we went to Old Delhi by metro. The metro system us great, very clean, modern and very efficient. There are separate female carriages which is great at rush hour!
Old Delhi had more character to it. We went to the Red Fort and picked up a guide for 150Rs to show us around. The red sandstone fort is worth a visit. As is Jama Masgid - the largest mosque in India. We walked there down Chawk Bazaar which was quite manic! The mosque has a tall minrrette which offers great views of New Delhi from the top. It's free to get in the mosque but then they charge 200Rs per camera (they certainly search you on admission). Hopefully they don't find phones as they charge for them aswell. I
was wearing short trousers so I had to don a long flowery (Nora Battyesk) gown.
It is however 100Rs (gone up from 50) to go up the tower. Be careful of the shoe minders - they tried to charge us 20Rs instead of the normal 5Rs to which we not so politely told them to get lost. We put our shoes in our bag instead in protest so they greedy buggers got nothing!
So the free entry actually equates to a possible 340Rs for 2 people with 1 camera! Very religious!
The next day we visited the Gandhi memorial. We took the metro to the stop that looked nearest on the map but turned out to be nowhere near! After about 30mins of wondering and asking people we ended up getting a tuktuk. The museum is very interesting, you can see the place where he took his last steps and fell on his assassination. The reams of written information in my opinion was confusing and hard to read as it wasn't in chronological order. The multi media centre upstairs is even more confusing and completely pointless albeit looking jazzy! Worth a visit though to learn more about the
history of India from before independence and how Ghandi influenced society as a whole.
We then went to the lotus temple in the south of the city. It is a Bahai temple and we witnessed a service while we were there. The metro is at the rear of the temple but we took a tuk tuk from the entrance.
Accommodation
We ended up having a free pickup from New Delhi train station from Yatri GH. Yatri is recommended in the LP and is 1km from Connaught place so quite convenient. It's a nice little place of 8 rooms which has a nice outside terrace. However the cost was 4000Rs and that was for one of the smaller rooms (normally 4500Rs). The owner - Mr Puri who lives next door is a chatty, organised well-to-do kinda chap who will help you out as much as he can. He got his driver to take me in the car to the ATM for free which was nice.
Unfortunately Yatri was only available for one night so we had to move. We stayed a bit further out in New Rajender Sadan at Charlottes BnB (2nd on TripAdvisor) about 4km
from Connaught place (not that we really wanted to go there again)!
Charlottes was 3500Rs per night and is basically a homestay with only 2 guestrooms. It doesn't have a sign outside so we were very confused when we got there. Apparently this is due to security. Anyway it is a lovely little apartment and Charlotte is a VERY chatty lady who gives you all the information you need and MORE! The metro station is a 15 minute walk away although you are told it is just across the street. We managed to find it using the very prolonged list of landmarks and instructions. Once we had done it a few times it was easy.
The rooms are cozy and the beds are really comfortable with proper quilts which was nice. You have use of a laptop but they are pretty slow and need some maintenance. Wifi was available though so good for my iPhone. Breakfast is homemade and tasty (complemented by random strawberry and chocolate cornflakes but nice) with toasted sandwiches one day and egg with roti the next day.
Off to Agra from Delhi Nizzamudin station.
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