Eating in Delhi

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Trip Start Aug 03, 2007 Trip End Oct 18, 2007 Next
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  Delhi, India
Sunday, August 5, 2007

I've titled this "Eating in Delhi" because the food is so good!  It's just like what we get at home!

We landed at 3am local time in Delhi.  Because if the very early hour, we reserved a room for that night, emailed the hotel that we had bicycles and could they send an appropriate car for our airport pick up.  They emailed us back saying, sure, we'll send a big van for you.  After navigating in the dark aggressive mist, all the parked cars, tuk-tuks, potholes and random blocks of cement to get to the hired car we discover it's a two door car that someone creatively wedged two more back doors on.  No way our bicycles, much less the rest of our junk and us are going to fit in there will all the doors closed.  So, we stuff all our junk in the back seat, bikes dangling out the open back gate, both of us squeezing into the front passenger seat and off we sputter hoping that the driver, (who hasn't said a word to us since we met him, we followed him because he had a sign reading "KNAPP") knows what he's doing.  The traffic at 4:30am was amazing, everyone driving everywhere blaring their horns, it was great!  I feel like we've dropped into a completely different world once again.

We slept for a few hours then went down to the breakfast buffet.  The buffet looked just like what you would see at an lunch special buffet in an Indian restaurant back home!  Including the spice level, which is a bit much first thing.  Then off to explore our new country and city.  Delhi just completed an elevated train system and it is quite user friendly.  Not nearly as exciting as riding in the back of a tuk-tuk, but a bit easier on the bum.  We found the "government tourism office" which was quite interested in putting us in their cars and safely taking us around to the sights.  We skipped the city tours but did sign up to go see Taj Mahal and a package deal to get us up to the Kashmir area where we hope to continue bicycling.

The sights in Delhi are a bit spread out, but that allows you to experience riding in tuk tuks!  A word about tuk-tuks, they are a three wheel motorcycle sort of thing where you sit behind the driver on a covered bench.  Because of the three wheels and the lack of car body, it feels like you are about to tip over and very vulnerable.  These things weave in and out of traffic like crazy.  It makes me laugh to watch them fly around the city streets and laugh even harder when I get to be in the back on one of them.   I won't bore you with a list of what we saw, but the pictures include their Secretariat buildings (Government buildings), Jama Masjid (India's largest Mosque) and Red Fort.

Taj Mahal is just as beautiful as everyone makes it out to be.  The white marble is so white it looks as if it is glowing.  The marble inlay of the building is remarkable, the detail is amazing.  Such slivers of colored stones set in such precision cover the building.  They say that 20,000 people worked on the construction 24hrs a day for 22 years.  Maybe I've spent too much time reading about European cathedrals, but that seems awfully quick for such a magnificent building.  The interior is even more detailed, around the tombs there are 4 walls, boxing them in that are just filled with carved marble and marble inlay.  The grounds also have a Mosque, which I've included a picture of as well.

Finally, before we leave big cities for a while, we found a movie house that was showing the new Harry Potter film in English.  I am a bit embarrassed to say that I'm a fan.  Seeing a movie in Delhi was mostly like at home except in the middle of the movie there was an abrupt switch to a Pepsi commercial and everyone (but us) jumped up to pee.  The second thing was that the web site says that the movie running time was 2hr 18min where, even with the pee break, ours was 2hr 10min.  So, somewhere they cut about 15min out of the movie!  Now I'm looking forward to seeing it when it comes out on DVD to see what I missed.

Next up, we're heading north to the Kashmir area to play in some BIG mountains!.

02-Secretariat

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

01-Starting line	03-Taj Mahal	04-Taj Mahal	05-Us at the Taj Mahal
06-Marble inlay detail	07-Taj Mahal's Mosque	08-Kids playing with the pigeons	09-Delhi
10-Jama Masjid	11-Delhi	12-Delhi	13-Red Fort
14-Pilgrim

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