Blogs from National Capital Territory, India, Asia - page 15

Mercredi, nous avons profité de notre dernière journée à Delhi pour visiter les choses qu'on avait manqué le 2 janvier. On a commencé par la Jama Masjid, plus célèbre mosquée de l'Inde. En tant que femme blanche infidèle (dans le sens islamique du terme), Michèle a dû se balader avec une jolie tunique rouge. Nous avons ensuite pris la direction de la Tombe de Humayun, un empereur ayant régné dans les année 1500. Il s'agit d'un jolie complexe situé dans un immense jardin (peu luxuriant à cette époque de l'année). On dit que cet édifice à été une inspiration dans la construction du Taj Mahal un siècle plus tard. L'arrêt suivant est le Qutb Minar, un minaret d'une centaine de mètres qui ressemble à une immense cheminée. Étonnement, c'est probablement le site touristique avec la plus ... read more

I always knew deep down, for the longest time, that I wanted to do Ladakh some day. And this thought seemed a distant dream to me, rather unthinkable back then when I started to work a few years ago as a Corporate Lawyer in one of the Legal Firms in Delhi. I have always lead a very cliched' life. Always had this burning desire to travel, to explore the unknown, to rediscover myself and to tread a path filled with stories and memories. However, I never tried to look inside of me, my passion, my dreams. They were lying dormant somewhere deep down inside of me waiting to be unleashed and to be unfolded. It just so happened that sometime last year in the month of July, I finally took the call of pulling out of ... read more

We have now left India and the last two train journeys we had probably epitomised this amasing country and it's future. The first was an 18 hour slog from Jaisalmer to Old Delhi station. Poor Daniel was doing it with his broken collar bone which got very painful at one point. We had booked into 2nd Class Sleeper. It is where you get to see all India, its dirt cheap, literally, and arrives at the same time as the AC classes. We had four berths in the same area. Our seats had been allocated to us by text message. A brother and sister had the other two berths in our group of six. Across the narrow gangway was a drunk soldier! The seats are configured so that the back of the bench seat becomes the middle ... read more

The underbelly of travelling cheaply is that compromises have to be made in oder to lower the cost. When we booked Wongdhen House we chose it for its value, being fairly cheap yet fairly good condition. To save money we booked it for two nights only - the 7th and 8th. Because check in time is noon, and our flight arrived into Delhi at 4.30am this morning (the 7th) we agreed to wait until noon for a driver to pick us up. Cue eight hours of waiting. There is only so long I can spend disinterestedly reading Reddit before it becomes a chore. Ultimately it was eight hours of nothingness: it wasn't even boring. It just felt like a stretch of absent-presence. Marc Auge describes airport waiting rooms as non-places designed to be almost outside time ... read more

It started with a fateful remark. We had cleared the airport, all very modern, and were on the super efficient express train heading for New Delhi Railway Station. "I feel Delhi has not really hit us yet", I said to Jane. And it hadn't. We could have been in London or Paris. By the time we had got to the station we had decided to try and book our train to Amritsar before heading to our hostel in South Delhi. All the guides books and signs say do not get taken in by touts and yet we still were. Now it is not easy to find the International Tourist Bureau at New Delhi station. We failed to do so on this visit and got persuade to take a short tuktuk ride to find a good city ... read more