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Published: November 17th 2006
Paharganj from below
For some reason I loved this place. Chaotic and crazy for sure but it has a charm. You wouldn't guess it by looking at that picture though ;).We arrived into Delhi at 4:30 in the morning. Not the best time to arrive in a huge metropolis that has the reputation to drive crazy even the most hardened traveller, especially since I was feeling more sick than I ever felt in the last 3 weeks. The indian man whom I had been talking to on the bus told me the price I should expect to pay to go to the train station (my accomodation was close to the train station, and by getting a ride there you avoid to pay commission to your rickshaw driver which they'll get from the hotel if they drop you in front of it).
The drivers all jumped on me like fly on shit when I got off the bus thinking I was a stupid foreigner they could screw over but they were soon disapointed. I wanted to get my ride for 60Rs and I eventually got it, but they started their offers at 200Rs. It took me about 45 minutes before one agreed to take me. I managed to find my way from the train station fairly easily and checked in at a Ajay guesthouse at around 6AM. I asked at the
reception if he knew any doctor because I was feeling particularly bad by now and he actually gave me the phone number of one who was used to treat foreign customers. I called him and arranged an appointment at 10AM. He had another customer at the guesthouse so he'd come to see me in my room.
The doctor looked me up for a while, took out blood samples and told me that it would be better if I stay at the clinic in case I had something worse than just a bacterial infection and gave me some prescription for antibiotic/antifungal/probiotic. So I spent the day at the clinic reading a book with a cow staring at me from the street while she was trying to eat the leather on a scooter's seat. The clinic was pretty nice and seemed to have quite a crowd of expats/travellers coming and going.
The next day I was feeling much better. It seems the drugs were working. I decided to go explore Old Delhi.
I immediately loved Delhi. I don't know why exactly but the madness of it all makes it interesting. The incredibely dirty streets, stray dogs, starving cows, rickshaws,
Delhi in early morning
The street with my hotel, at 5:30 AM low-caste beggars woman with their kids in their hand, arrogant brahmin man walking in front with his family behind (wife invariably fat if past 30), touts selling everything from hash to tam-tam harassing you and the insane traffic. Some people get culture shock when they land into Delhi from London, New York or Auckland and I can understand it. It is chaotic, smelly and scary to the newcomer. However I had no such problem. Maybe it is because to me Delhi is just a bit more than what I'm used to. A bit more beggars than Manila, a bit more dirty than Lahore, a bit more touts than Kowloon and a bit more traffic than Beijing. Nothing came as a shock, I had seen most of it but here it was, all mixed together in a single crazy city.
I walked there which took longer than I had planned but it was interesting to look at the Old Town. As you're walking around you encounter old Mughal Archs and monuments which are used by the local to hang their clothes, as electrical pole and to house fruit stalls like if it was just another building and not some magnificient
century old monument. On the way to the Red Fort there were lots of street stalls selling book and one thing I noticed was that Meim Kampf was a recurring book, I just saw it everywhere it seems. I don't know why indians seems so attracted by this book. It might explain what the leader of Shiv Sena party said a few years ago after his party had initiated the destruction of a very important Mosque and race riots against muslims: "If they (talking about indian muslims) acted like jews in Germany, isn't it normal that they're treated like the jews were in Germany". Hopefully that was just a sentence thrown in the air, but still, the popularity of this book coupled with the presence of an extreme anti-muslim hindu mainstream party in India is a bit scary.
I arrived in the Red Fort after about 4 hour walk (I did take my time walking around the Old City). The Fort was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in the early 17th century when he moved his capital in what is now called Old Delhi (it was the seventh city to be built on Delhi's site, the 8th
one was the one built by the british called New Delhi, all the others have been destroyed by invasion). It is built by the Yamuna river, a tributary of the Ganges. It is also where the Independance of India was declared in 1947.
Security was very tight at the gate with body search, x-ray, bag search and machine-gunners hidden behind sand-bags wall. It was definately not the place to make jokes about having a bomb. After paying for a ticket 20 time more expansive than what indians pay, I was in the Fort complex which was nice without being magnificent. I wandered around the complex for about an hour; taking pictures, reading the fairly helpful historical plaques and just sit around in the shade in one of the garden. Lovely place, especially if you contrast the cleanliness of the fort compared to the chaos of Delhi outside.
I was feeling much better that day but I was still pretty tired after walking for several hours in the Indian sun so I opted to take a rickshaw back to the guesthouse and have a little nap. After I went to the clinic again but was told that the test
would be ready only the next day so I decided to stay an extra day in Delhi to get the results. I went to eat in some nepali restaurant that was playing Bob Marley and had some pretty good spaghetti (find the mistake).
The next day I woke up late and walked around Pahar Ganj in the morning (after having french toast at the Nepali restaurant, of course). I came to the realization that scaring cows away is great fun, they don't seem used to it 😉. I decided to go buy my ticket for Agra tomorrow at the train station after lunch. Thinking that buying a ticket would be a matter of walking in and saying Agra I wasn't prepared for what was to come. Apparently you need your passport to get your ticket which I had somehow forgot in my room so I had to walk all the way back to get it. Then I had to wait about an hour and a half in the Foreigner's ticket Office (about the only place in India where being a foreigner is an advantage since we have seats for waiting), 30 minutes of those were due to the fact
that the ticket guy decided to have coffee break and chat with his buddy in full view of us who were waiting like idiots, probably just to show us who was the boss. At least the guy next to me kept a conversation going. I liked the way he described how he got caught in a massive landslide in Spiti, on the exact same road that I took, and had a 3 meters tall rock fall a few feets from him. Glad he didn't tell me that before I went on that road. Anyway, in the end I got my ticket (after more than 3 hours overall).
That ticket buying thing was quite tiring and left me with too little time before sunset to do any far-away sightseeing so I just went to Connaught Place, the "modern" part of Delhi, by walk. The contrast with Pahar Ganj/Old Delhi is very interesting but not too dramatic. We're still in Delhi and even the more modern part could hardly be mistaken for Tokyo.
I had dinner at the guesthouse after which I went to the clinic to get the test result (only bacteria, no giardias or amoeba, yay) and then
Paharganj from above 2
Woman in bright sari, sikh man in turban, bicycle, rickshaw, motorcycle, backpackers: you've got it all. went to an Internet cafe. There I heard a familiar voice in french; it is Pascale and Olivier, the french trekkers I had met in Karimabad, Pakistan a month ago. We caught up with our travel for a few hours before we decided to go to bed relatively early since I had to wake up at 5AM to get on the train and they had to do so at similar hours as they were heading straight into Nepal (they're real trekkers 😉 ). It was good to catch up with them after the several communal meals we shared up in the mountains.
I was happy of my stay in Delhi, I was cured and I thoroughly enjoyed the city itself. I can understand why people are scared of it but you just have to embrace the chaos and find your safe spots (good restaurant, hotel, internet cafe) when you want to get away from the urban jungle and you'll be fine.
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Hu
non-member comment
WHAT?
How in the fuck you know that beggar was low caste and the guy walking past was brahmin. Motherfucker. Fuck you. Maybe you need to first worry about the "HOMELESS" like you say in your fucking country.