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Published: October 3rd 2017
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Our bags emerged surprisingly quickly, there was a special booth for e-visas and we walked straight through customs to find a little man waiting with a sign with Dave’s name on it – sort of.
It was quite a long walk to the car park – everything in India is on a large scale – and then we had our introduction to the truly appalling Delhi traffic, even at that hour of the morning. Dave thought the hotel was near the airport, and it is as the crow flies and by Delhi standards, but it is quite a long way round by road. We were a bit freaked out by this and we also had to negotiate some down time before beginning the sightseeing program. This rather inauspicious beginning continued when we got to the hotel and found that they had not been advised to provide early check in. Dave more or less staged a sit down strike and fortunately the concierge found us a nice room where we had a shower and Dave went to sleep.
At 11 o’clock we met the driver and experienced more appalling traffic on the way to pick up the local
guide who was a sikh from Kashmir. Our driver was also a sikh but from Rajastan, as we discovered later. We also discovered that we had arrived in the middle of a nine day festival called Navrati, meaning ‘Nine Nights’. The festival is dedicated to the Goddess Durga and her nine avatars, also known as Navdurga and is one of the most popular Hindu festivals celebrated in the country. Fortunately for us, business seemed to continue much as usual. We saw from the outside:
the Jama Masjid or mosque (closed for prayers), but we could go up the steps and look in;
the Red Fort (closed for the festival);
the Ghandhi Memorial (closed for refurbishment).
We were more fortunate in the parliamentary area of New Delhi, as you only drive past the buildings and look at them. It is beautifully laid out and spacious and includes the Presidential Palace, the modern buildings for key government departments, Parliament House which is a huge round building which has a much bigger area in relation to its height than our Beehive, and looks quite different and also various streets where diplomats and rich people live. Our driver also enthusiastically pointed out
the large Army and Air Force areas in New Delhi every time we passed them.
The highlight was a tuktuk ride in old Delhi with our guide. Tuktuks are three wheeled motorised vehicles with open sides and there are hundreds probably thousands of them. There are also rickshaws which are pedal powered three wheelers. Old Delhi is incredibly crowded with people and vehicles, quite chaotic and we left our tuktuk part way and walked along a square called Chandni Chowk or Moonlight Square because there used to be a night market there. We came to the spice market where we went to a shop called the Golden Horse. This shop obviously caters to tourists but it was very interesting all the same, and walking to and from it was an unforgettable experience. We did not feel unsafe but I would not have liked to do it by ourselves. Our tuktuk was waiting for us and took us back to where the car was waiting. Tuktuks are very cheap and I gave the driver a bit extra as he had had to wait around and his face absolutely lit up as he thanked us, I couldn’t believe that such a
small gesture could have such an effect. I think these drivers have a pretty hard life. We also saw a lot of goods being moved by human muscle power, and also casual labourers waiting hopefully for a job. Also it is really true that Indian cities have the most incredible bunches and festoons of power cables draped around their buildings in the older and poorer areas.
After this we were dropped off for lunch at the Pindi restaurant, named after Rawalpindi as that is where the family that run it came from. It was obviously a tourist joint, but the food and service were very good and it was very clean. We did not get sick afterwards, which is the risk with eating street food; to do that you need to have time to acclimatise your system to it.
After lunch we drove past the Akshardam Temple and a Hanuman Temple, to Humayans Tomb which we did go into. This was built for the second Mogul emperor and is in Mughal style like many monuments that we saw in India It is built in red sandstone with decorations of white marble, and the dome is
also covered in white marble contrasting with the red sandstone walls. Its four part Persian style garden (charbargh) was the first of its kind in India. It has a large impressive entrance gate with adjoining rooms and a courtyard with water courses in front of the tomb building. This has many rooms arranged in a pattern around the central chamber which contains a replica tombstone, the real burial chamber being underground. The tomb of the emperor’s barber was nearby, as barbers had to be very trusted servants given that they wielded a potentially deadly shaving knife. It felt incredibly hot crossing the courtyard back to the car.
The guide was very keen for us to visit a Kashmiri carpet making establishment but we had had enough by then and managed to convince him that we were not in a proper frame of mind to appreciate it and would not be buying anything as we have carpets already. We parted amicably and fought our way back to the hotel through the terrible traffic. This was an exercise in patience.
When we got back Dave lay down and went to sleep and after waiting
for an hour or two Tamara decided she didn’t really need dinner and went to bed. It was quite beneficial to skip dinner as we had had a big lunch and it reduces the stress on the body as it acclimatises. We had to be ready for the drive to Agra the next day.
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