WARNING WARNING - THIS IS LONG - so if anyone is bored, just skip ahead hee...(not you 3 kids though - Its compulsory for you and I'm going to be asking questions when I get home to check that you've read it!)
I've written my feelings on Delhi but there is no doubt that no two people will have the same perspective of a visit to Delhi - that's why the following entry has been a tough one 'cos it's been hard just getting my thoughts together enough to be able to describe what we think... so here goes anyway.....
Delhi sure is a place where a picture tells a thousand words but looking at pictures of Delhi alone does it an injustice, as the pictures only show the poverty and the pollution.. not the people...
We arrived here quite nervous after hearing so many "horror stories" and seeing many photos on TV and the web of the pollution, poverty, crowdedness and basic chaos. We expected to be overwhelmed and intimidated and mostly shocked by what we were about to see and experience.
What Rob and I have felt has totally surprised both of us. We couldn't say "we love Delhi" - it's not that sort of feeling. It's a fascinating city with so many parts to it that we're so glad we've had 4 days here as it's given us time to relax into the atmosphere instead of "surviving it".
Some of the photos I looked at dozens of times before coming to Delhi looked shocking and now I've taken 100's (1000's ?? hee hee - joking) of these same scenes. The thing that is totally undeniable is the pollution. It's the pollution that seems to have the most impact on the city. Everything is filthy, the smog, and the dust is another part of Delhi that can't really be described. It's the most obvious single aspect that affects everything in the city.
The working and living environment, the health of everyone (I'm going to have to do a google search when we get home to try and find what the stats are for life spans of children born into places like Delhi). Rob and I keep showering and washing our hair as our skin feels tight and filthy after a couple of hours. You can feel the grim on every single surface.
The other thing that the pictures cant tell you is the traffic jams and noise - imagine a street clogged with motor rickshaws, cars, cows, bullocks pulling trays, elephants - yep elephants! - seen 3 so far, goats, dogs, bicycle rickshaws, motorbikes and people as it's impossible to walk on the footpaths as they are jammed with everything imaginable and everywhere vehicles honking continuously - the funny thing is after a day or so you stop noticing it (must admit I'm sleeping with ear plugs though heee
Now here's the thing that totally caught us unexpectedly - in spite of the noise and smog/dirt pollution the city feels good. The people are very relaxed, friendly, smiling, and interested. I guess it is our problem that our perception before coming here was that if you are living in this sort of environment then how could you possibly be happy and or content. But in all this chaos everyone is just going about their normal business and don't seem to find a problem in what we see as a total chaos. (and amongst all this filth and chaos the women walk around in their rainbow of sari's that are so stark and bright against the filth and brighten every picture or scene you look at.) A truly amazing and fascinating place, people, culture.
As to what we've been doing ...
We gave ourselves a really soft landing by booking our first 2 nights in the Master Paying Guest House which has only 4 guest rooms in the 'good part' of Delhi. We arrived at 2.30am - killer but got picked up by the GHouse so no hassles there\
The GH proved to be everything a million people on the web and every guide book said it was. Everyone is treated like a family visitor and the owners Avnish and Ushi are around whenever to sit and chat and help you with every bit of help you could want about anything. On our first day, Ushi also gave us her mobile phone for the day when we took a car to do the tourist sights and some shopping. This was for if we wanted her to tell the driver anything different or if there was any problem at all - unbelievable hey!?? - (and I only rang her once... to ask her a shopping question...hee hee)
On this day we visited 2 World Heritage listed monuments both really impressive and great for photos. (the smog is sure killing the photos though! - like having 2 foot fog blocking the photo shoots! - geez!) - anyway - Humayun's Tomb is a mausoleum built for an emperor and was supposedly the inspiration for the Taj Mahal. Then we went to Qutub Minar which is a 5 storey tower built in 1193AD to mark the first Muslim dynasty in India. We also went to Bahai's House of Worship - Lotus temple which everyone (not only Australian's) say is a copy of our Opera House as it has the same shape with the white petals.
Then we hit the markets - all very hard work but a good day's work had been done..hee This was the easy day as it is all basically New Delhi or outer area which means it the 'new' modern clean British planned part of Delhi. We of course had to run the gauntlet of the traffic dodgem cars and went past many of the indescribable slums lining the streets but it was from the protection of our taxi - so as I said - soft landing so far.... and back to our lovely guest house with our own balcony and 4 yep 4 house boys who come running with my Lipton's tea if I ring the buzzer..
The next morning 6 of us staying in the GH took Avnish's (the owner) Hidden Delhi Tour. This has become famous on the internet and one of the reasons why you have to book 6 months a head to get a bed here. Avnish runs it 2 mornings a week -(Sorrell from Getaway stayed here and filmed it and is coming back to stay next month.) We had to be up at 6am for a cuppa and then all piled into a minivan with Avenish. First we went to the flower market in Delhi. It was amazing and totally disappears by about 8am with the area turning back into a bit of a slum area until the next day. We then went into the Old City - yep that's where all 'those photos' come from. Mad Max looks tame to first impressions of this area as you enter it. Its absolute filthy chaos and oh so fascinating! We got 3 rickshaws and spent over an hour going up and down all the little alleys and streets, getting off for breakfast in one of the little shops (curry at 7.30am...hard going even for Rob). Avnish has made contacts all through the old city that allowed us entry into amazing places. We went into 3 Havars (not sure how to say or spell it - I'll look it up later) These are the houses within the old city that are just a wall with a door but on entering they are 3 or 4 stories with a courtyard very similar to the way the Chinese houses are organised.
During our stroll thru the streats we realised that we were misinterpreting what we were seeing. (Thanks of course to Avnish's explanations) Many men were squatting on the side of a road, looking filthy, looking like they were loitering and basically doing nothing.... wrong.... Avenish pointed out small boxes or tools nearby each of them. In them was for example an old saw along the road further their was a tap, further still was a box with old wire. This is I guess you could call it their business address (hee) Tthese men all line that particular area and their old tool is a symbol (dare I say an advertisement??!) on their skill. They sit there and if anyone wants a carpenter they go up to the bloke with the broken saw etc and he is hired for the day or by the hour.
Avenish then took us to a temple where Gandhi used to pray and walked us through the different temples explaining their meaning as we went - which included getting the red dot on the foreword (yep even Rob..hee hee - no cameras allowed in drat it!~ hee ) this finishing up with Avenish conducting a 5 minute meditation session with us sitting on the floor of the temple doing visualisation. We had to imagine sometime that we felt happy etc.... I ask Rob later what he thought about (me?) and he said he was thinking of what horse was running at Randwick on Wednesday!!! - (no hope I'm afraid)
We then went to an area where we drove down a skinny road that was lined for miles with clothes lines like when we were young (rope with the bit stick to prop them up). Both sides of the road had mud brick walls so that you couldn't see what was behind. We stopped and went through an entrance and there was the most amazing scene behind the walls. It was a huge laundry business. It was a few acres of open land with tents and huts where people lived on the outer rim of the compound and filling the whole inside area were concreted pits of varying sizes that were actually used in a systematic way - soaking pits, washing pits, rinsing pits and then the old ladies lined up with heavy metal irons filled with hot coals ironing the dried clothes! (I tried to lift one of the irons and could barely get it off the table - unbelievable!) We finished up back at the GHouse at 11.30am after a wonderful morning
Sadly we had to check out as even though I had booked the GH 5 months ago they only had a vacancy for 2 nights not the 3 we'd wanted. We caught a car down to our hotel which was where our Intrepid tour was going to start from. This has turned out great as the area Karol Bagh is in a fantastic spot with wonderful street life and plenty of people watching to be done. This meant we had one more free day the next day before we had to meet up with the tour group at 6pm.
Ushi from the guest house had told us about this regional thing that happens and is supposedly wonderful and she was sure we would love it..... we didn't really understand what it was and just politely said we might go, but later on sitting in the street near out hotel an Indian lady started chatting to us and when she asked our plans and we said the next day was free she too said we must go to this same "Mela" (so - I had to go and google it to see what they were telling us to do and found that Mela means festival!!). - we were in!
It was about an hour out of Delhi and it turned out a great day. It was set up in a great park that had rolling hills and big trees and there were over 400 hundred stalls set up in thatched huts selling crafts from all over India. Add to these kites, dancers, singers, drums, puppet shows, coloured umbrellas, food from every region of India and of course hundreds of women in their beautiful saris! Wonderful to just stroll around - and in perfect weather. - a real bonus day out of the ordinary and not a tourist in sight.
We then had to find someway to get home amongst the chaos that had resulted by 3pm when we decided to leave - There was a zillion people (add the list of modes of transport above) completely deadlocked around the entrance as the Mela didn't finish to 10pm and they were pouring in. We had no way of finding a taxi and good luck with picking the right bus as the destinations are in Hindi. Finally in desperation we hired a motorised rickshaw to drive us back to Delhi. Now this sounds fine but they are only meant for SHORT journeys as it can be quite suicidal going around the block (which we were fine with) the major problem with traveling distances in them is the pollution! - You get totally gassed! - The fumes from every car is in your face and the dirt... cant even tell you about the dirt... I almost slid out of the rickshaw by the time we got back...ha hahaha So spent the next hour hosing ourselves down before the first meeting up of our group!
It's a real diverse group and the leader is a young Indian guy called Javed who actually comes from Rajastan the province to which our tour is heading The ages of the group are from about 65? to about 20 and is pretty much spaced through that ie. About 65, 50's (us) 40's 30's mid 20's and the one young girl who is about 20 I'm guessing. We had short hello meeting and then all went out to dinner together - nice night but most of us were spewing that the meal ended up costing us about $10 a head which is ridiculously high (had lunch today for $2.40 including a Pepsi).
So now finally I'm up to today! - We met at 9am and caught a local bus into the Old City - it was good to have a chance to catch a local one as, as I said we wanted to yesterday but couldn't read any destinations so couldn't do it. It was packed with workers so that was a novelty too, jamming on with them all. (It was during this ride that I spotted another elephant - amazing)
We took bicycle rickshaws to the spice market which is the biggest in India, went to another couple of temples (they are all so different depending on which religion so, so far seeing them is still interesting) We walked for an hour through the old city (which is by far the most fascinating part of Delhi) and at one staged walked down one street where many of the women were in full birkus (dont know how to spell it!??) I asked Javed and he said that this was the Muslim section of the old city. They looked amazing coming towards us down skinny polluted chaotic alleys on the back of the bicycle rickshaws in the full black birkus - PHOTO HEAVEN.... but we'd been warned previously not to photograph them as it can get nasty...oh well, another one down to the memory.
We then caught the metro which is only 5 years old and more modern than our city loop with computerised disks etc. It was empty down there (AND SPOTLESS! -a cleanliness which hits you when we'd just left the filth on the streets above).... and so we naturally assumed it must be too expensive for people to use. We mentioned this to Javed and he said its about 8 rupees and the bus is 10 so its cheaper than the filthy dirty overcrowded 100 year old buses that the streets are crowded with - but people wont change their habits! Gradually the young people are starting to use the metro but most Indians aren't! - I guess you'd have to think that this sort of says it's a culture that's very set and good luck if anything is needed of the people to change something?
Free afternoon then so our group split - we all firstly went to a restaurant that was recommended by lonely planet but when we all got to the door, 6 of us bailed as it was over a dollar for a drink! - Obscene! 6 went in and 6 of us walked until we found a little place that was packed with local people which we figured was a good sign, had lunch and it cost us just over $2 each with drink - much better! - and delicious! We have had real problems with the food in as much as we can't understand the menu (same in Bangkok)... trial and error though we're gradually learning more words for the ingredients so it'll get better.
Tomorrow off to Agra to see the Taj!! We have to leave the hotel by 6am to catch the train for a 3 hour trip and will have breaky on the train
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