Delhi

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Delhi
Wow what a start to India! Thankfully Sri Lanka has given us the foundations to cope with India, we woke up feeling rather cold in the Indian autumnul sun after Sri Lanka's scorching heat, we find the food rather bland after Sri Lanka's burning chillis, we find the scams and touts boring and predictable having heard it all before and even the driving is only mildly more scary than in Sri Lanka.

We started our first day in Delhi with a special tour of the city! We were shown around Delhi's underworld by a former street child who works for a charity called Salaam Balaak Trust, translated as 'salute the children Trust'. We read about the Trust in our guidebook as it explained about all of the street children in Delhi, it's a fairly similar story to that depicted in Mumbai in Slumdog Millionnaire. The children will leave home due to poverty, nasty parents or losing their parents and turn to a life of selling tea, pick pocketing and sleeping in the railway station, and these kids are the luckier ones, most of the girls get picked up by pimps and forced into prostitution. The Trust was stared over 20years ago to help these children get into sheltered housing, improve their health and offer them an education. We started our tour by being shown where the children in the railway statin slept and showered and were told how they came to be here, we were also told how brutal the police could be to the kids and why they turned to solvent abuse... To numb the pain of the beatings. We were taken to see a small illegal community living almost on the railway itself, the police and the railway turn a blind eye as most of the families work on the railway and they are paid almost nothing. The Trust is helping to give these children living here a formal education. We went to see a Contact Point that was specifically for street children who had families to live with on the strests. These children have a different life to those with no family- these children must beg, steal and work to give money to their parents who will most likely spend the money on drugs. The trust tries to get these children into a full time shelter but often fails as the parents will not let them - this would mean the parents would lose their main source of income. Most of these children can be convinced to visit the contact point daily for a shower, some food and some informal education. There are a number of these contact points around the city for children both with and without families, all have social workers, doctors and counsellors visiting weekly. The final stop on the journey was to see one of the boys shelters. This is where homeless boys can live and get a proper education and go on to get a decent job. Our tour guide was just finishing his final year of study and was doing the city tours to improve his English. One former street child turned photographer has just returned from New York after exhibiting his photographs, another has played roles in many small films and many more are working towards university and becoming doctors. We were really impressed by all of the positive changes made in the childrens lives. 

One of the strangest moments was much later on out in the centre of Delhi, a small dirty boy comes running over to Rich and I crying and begging. I look over at him and realise I recognise him from the contact point earlier that day. He was one of the children who had a family and was being scrubbed up with the gifts of soap and a toothbrush from the Trust. I turned to Rich and loudly said we saw him this morning at Salaam Balaak... A few moments later the child realised what I had said. Salaam Balaak! He grinned at us, shook our hands happily and ran off. I can only assume that he appreciates everything the trust does and knows the we would have paid a few rupees towards his care. The tour was only about £2 each but we chose to donate 1000Rs which works out about £12, enough to give medical support to a child with TB for a month. It was nice that there was no pressure to donate but we really wanted to. 

After our hectic morning we eat and went out to buy our train tickets for our onward journey and to further explore Delhi. Getting train tickets is an intersting pricess, they need so much information, luckily the office was very helpful- if a little grumpy though. 

Most of Delhi is under construction for the 2010 commonwealth games and so it is very dirty and dusty. But not as bad as we thought it would be! We had an interesting cycle rickshaw ride across the city and then found he one quite place there is to relax, a small park In the centre of Connaught Place. After watching the sunset we headed off to what sounded like nice, if somewhat small restaurant recommended in the guidebook. It was awful! The kitchen was totally open and looked filthy, they didn't have a toilet, not even a hole in the ground! We ran away from there to a cool coffe shop to use the loo, desperation had kicked in, and to work out were we would try next. On spotting the moderately priced but fun sounding revolving restuarant with veiws over the whole city we had formed a new plan. :-). And on route we stopped to get an Indian sim card... What a palarva that was! For a pay as you go sim card they want to know everything, including your fathers name, your passport and a photograph! It was as bad as getting the train tickets! 

After a pretty successful first day in Delhi, which we topped off with a posh meal at the rotating restaurant, we did a little shopping and floated around the markets. Knowing that Theo is coming to meet us soon, Rachel has been a lot less worried about filling her backpack to the brim with clothes. Fortunately, it's not been denting the travelling fund - the prices out here make Primark seem a rip off!
We ventured out to see the Red Fort - delhi's most famous monument, and ended up stuck in a traffic jam on the back of a cycle rickshaw for about 20 minutes. We were worried the fort would be closing soon, so we jumped off and found that walking was the fastest way to cover the remaining 2km. It was completely frantic though - millions of people and thousands of shops all crammed it. I was completed worn out by the time we arrived. We had to kill a couple of hours after the fort shut to return for it's sound and light show (which actually turned out simply to be a one hour history lesson played over loud speaker with a few colourful lights illuminating the palace buildings!) so after eating in an Indian fast food restaurant where we seemed to be the main attraction, we wandered down a lane and ended up in an enormous electrical market. It was great - miles upon miles of shops with funky lights on display, and not one person approached us cos why on earth would a tourist be interested in buying light fittings or fuseboxes?!!! A little safe haven in Delhi :-)

On our last day, we booked onto a city tourist bus. We thought this would be a great way to see the remaining sights and to meet a few people to share ideas and travelling experiences with.
One thing we overlooked was that almost all of Delhi's tourists are Indians! So we were a little shocked when we boarded the bus only to be greeted by the fixing stares of 30 Indian men! :-s Rachel was very uncomfortable but I assured her we could write it off at the first stop and get a rickshaw from there. However, after 30 minutes the stares started to die down, some of the guys actually started to introduce themsleves and be human, and we then discovered that the guide spoke perfect English. So we stuck with the 8 hour tour, saw some sights, took some photos and then posed for maybe 25 photographs that random people wanted to take with us (this is normal in India!). After getting drawn into verbal fight between a village leader and the guide about the overrun market visit wasting everyone's time, we bunked off of the tour to make it back in time for our train out of Delhi - we'd served our time!

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Photos

India Gate
We had more photos taken of Rich and I in Delhi than we took of the whole city!

B'ahai Lotus Temple
This was right at the end of our tour and well worth the wait

Comments

[jill]

exhausting
Hi guys. Well it was exhausting just reading about your time in Deli. I can't imagine all that hussle and bussle ,especially seeing those children. I would have been useless and wanted to bring them all home. Well done both of you and very generous giving them your donation. £12 doesnt mean much to us but you will have amade a real differance to 1 child. Happy travelling and look forward to your next blog take care love Jill and dave zz