Our couple boards a plane bound for the exotic lands of India. After a medium length flight, filled with all sorts of peculiarities... they find themselves in the Delhi airport, at night, alone... and with 1 billion strangers outside the arrival doors waiting for them. Will they survive?
HE SAYS:
Anyone who has ever read anything or talked to anyone who has visited Delhi will know that this is a very difficult city to love. I had prepared myself for the worst, but believed nothing could be as bad as they say... I was wrong. However, before I make it sound like this is a negative review of Delhi... I will quickly mention that there are many beautiful sights here as well... let me just tell the story.
We arrived in Delhi late in the evening... as it sounds like 90% of visitors do. I jostled with another man at the luggage carousel... but that is to be expected. We headed out the arrival doors... got our prepaid taxi, and I thought..."this isn't so bad". We then got our first taste of the city, as a hoard of taxi drivers descended on us as we left the terminal. We then spent 5 minutes trying to find the taxi we were assigned to. It took us 10 minutes to leave the lot through the traffic jam of taxis... although I was amazed to see that we only bumped one or two other cars. We then jostled through the cold Delhi night towards our Guest house (which thankfully I had previously booked... but we did end up paying about twice as much as we needed to for it). We were staying in an area called Pahar Ganj, which is a market ghetto with some cheap accommodations in a good central location. As we searched around the narrow streets in the dark, passing strange men doing who knows what... cows... and even an elephant, I wondered what we had gotten ourselves into. There was garbage and cow crap everywhere... I was cold and tired... I will admit, I was a little concerned. However, we eventually found our hotel, got checked in, and even had a little heater. After a little sleep, things would be a lot better.
Pahar Ganj in the day was a huge improvement. The garbage and poop was still there, but the colourful shops had opened up... and the large mass of humanity made the place a little more welcoming.
The first thing we learned as we set-out into Delhi on our first day is... TRUST NO ONE! We were befriended by a nice young man as we walked into the Connaught Circle area of the city, who said he would direct us to the government tourist agency. I knew there was one in that general direction... so I felt it was harmless to follow him. Sadly, he led us to a private office... who when we asked for the maps we wanted... made a strange phone call and asked us to sit down and wait for the maps to come. We thanked them politely and got up and left. This was a theme that was repeated time and time again on our trip. Sadly, most Indians treated us with mild indifference (unless they were laughing at me because of my bald head... more on that later). The ones who talked to us only wanted something out of us... and it really made me sad that they had this little befriending game they played... not the best ambassadors for India or the Indian people. We had this echoed from all the other tourists we came across. Hopefully this changes in the next few years... tourism in India could be even bigger than it is. But the misery caused by the touts and rickshaw drivers is very difficult.
Anyway, we did see some amazing sights. Safdarjang's Tomb was beautiful... a precursor to the Taj I believe (or maybe it was post... I can't remember). The cutest thing about this sight was there must have been 50 or so Indian couples all snuggling on the grounds. I guess in a conservative culture, you need to find places to hide your forbidden love... The National Museum had some great exhibits on early Indian civilizations... quite fascinating... plus the audio guide sounded so friendly, we forgot about all the con-men we had come across. We saw the Jama Masjid, which is the country's largest mosque. Very beautiful, and quite peaceful in the bustle of the old city. The final big sight we saw was the Red fort, or Lal Quila. Unbelievable... the massive outer walls surrounded a delicate and beautiful palace for the royal inhabitants. The juxtaposition of the two styles was striking.
The other memorable thing we did in Delhi was getting lost in the bustling bazaars of the old city. This wasn't really on purpose, but was fun anyway to see all the crazy things that were for sale. Here people mainly left us alone... but Anita was groped once or twice, which put a big damper on the expedition. Still, the stuff you could buy from beaten up old bearings (yeah... I saw the bearing shops... but not the counterfeit bearing manufacturers), to spices... carpets, blankets, books, food, pan (beetle nut wrapped in leaves), chai, bike repairs, etc etc etc... The crush of humanity, all selling something is overwhelming and fascinating all at the same time. I think that with the exception of some extremely poor beggars... everyone in India is selling something... a country of entrepreneurs.
So, all in all Delhi is a bit of a tough city to love... so we next move on to Agra to see if the Taj is as beautiful as they say. However, I am interested to see what Anita writes about Delhi...
SHE SAID:
Some people we've spoken to say the first place you get to in India will often appear as the toughest place to be, or maybe the least pleasant. Maybe that's true. It's hard to know exactly what to expect, especially as a Westerner doing it on your own with no tour group or business trip. We won't forget the immediate shoving as we arrived at the baggage claim in Delhi. My sweet and even tempered John had begun to shove back, standard it appeared, so we tried to blend in. After our cab driver bumper car-ed (literally) his way out of the airport with no one getting out of their cab assessing any car damages, we were off on our adventure. What was amusing was watching the single gear bike riders with an upright posture looking like it's a leisure bike ride, alongside the crazy auto rickshaws, cars and trucks on the busy street.
SIGHTS: Streets keep you alert here, with horns, yelling, having to weave through other pedestrians, shopkeepers, bike and auto rickshaws, motorcycles and scooters, cars, bikes, weaving through carts led by horses, camels, footloose cows, dogs, an elephant, monkeys above, avoiding the sidewalks often filled with urine and/or urinaters, animal and human feces and garbage of every sort. This is not all in one spot, but a summary. Nevertheless, it was the way Las Vegas has way too much stimuli, where most people find it appropriate to stay only a few days. This was a different stimuli of course.
SMELLS: You can see and smell the pollution in the city, and especially burnt plastic. We found many a campfire, probably both for keeping warm as it is currently winter in India, as well as getting rid of garbage. We suspect a barber was also burning his day's haircuts one night....mmmm, burning hair. We noticed one shopkeeper who actually had a garbage can (which don't seem every popular themselves) come to the middle of the street, and dumped his can in front of us. Doesn't look like garbage removal exists, perhaps.
PEOPLE: Where are the women? We see maybe 1 in a 1000 it seems, though more are on motorcycles, which also doesn't seem to fit the India image of females. I was just excited to see the beautiful Sari's, but haven't had too much exposure yet.
FOOD: Loved the food. Period. Naan, Pappadum bread, chicken, lentil dishes, all kinds of teas. It would have been nice to have clean plates and cutlery most of the time, but you can't have it all. (my mom or aunt Peka could never last here, haha!)
BUGS: Unfortunately we saw and lived with some roaches, starting from our first morning in Delhi. Luckily they weren't so big, just as big as I've seen them in Canada. Glad I expected much worse. Not sure if they are smaller because of the time of year here? Well, it was hard to sleep at night, but knotting up my sleeping bag with arms in, almost choking at my neck, and putting on ear plugs gave me a false sense of protection. It sort of worked once I could fall asleep.
Overall, I was excited about being in India and experiencing what I wouldn't have known, but disappointed that we weren't going to get to know a lot of locals with the way things were going. We couldn't even ask anyone directions because they would either mislead us, or expect something from us. So the only escape from aggressive humans in Delhi was our room, with a few bugs. I felt though that it was a blessing being winter and cool...with long pants, close toed shoes and sweaters to keep us warm, it also protected us from the dirt on the streets. I don't know how we would do it in extreme heat...truly.
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