The Planet of Delhi

I had a good time in Shimla despite the initial room hassle. It was basically the HQ of the UK government in India during the summer so it is full of old Victorian buildings and churches... Very strange to see this in the middle of the Indian hills. It is a real Indian tourist hot spot, hence the problem finding a room, which meant that there were lots of Indian honeymooners there and tourists from all over the country. It made it very interesting because many of these tourists spoke good English and would be keen to chat so I got to speak to all sorts of people... There were the three teachers from Calcutta who were on the bus with me from Manali, and who invited me to both lunch and dinner, the two families from Southern India who whose father was showing them the north, the mountain biker who had come up from Mumbai on his own to race in some international mountain bike competition. It is fascinating to speak to these people and get their take on India, what is happening, and some of the comments are so unexpected. One guy, after chatting for a couple of seconds turned around and said that he really did not like his own face. People are very open very quickly.

The other thing about Shimla is its location at the top of hills... In the evening as the sun sets all the valleys mist up, and with the orange colour in the sky, you really get a sensation of being on top of the clouds, on top of the world. It is beautiful. I also got to see a religious ceremony for the hindu Dussehra festival which was impressive. Huge crowds of people converged around this temple, there was a procession with men dressed up as gods going through the crowd, one of whom was banging people on the head with the ball at the end of a stick. He gave me a good bang on the head too which certainly made the crowd laugh.

From Shimla, I got a train to Delhi which was great after all the crazy bus journeys I had been doing. I was in the equivalent of the European 2nd class, so the Indians in the class are reasonably well off, people who work for the army, Citibank and Pepsi are some of the people I met. They are incredibly friendly, incredibly interested in what you are doing travelling around. They find it extremely difficult to understand that a foreigner is not travelling in first class because they expect all westerners to just have infinite bundles of money...

My first experience of Delhi was on the night train arriving in the early morning. I looked at the window, and there were loads of men squatting along side the railway track in what was clearly a shantytown area. It is quite common for people to squat along the street in Asia, just as people in the West might sit on the bench. But then it dawned on me that these guys weren't just squatting, they were actually all shitting. Hundreds of men taking their morning dump alongside the railway track under the gaze of the thousands of train passengers going through (Indian trains are very very long). It was nuts.

The next thing I knew I was in a rickshaw heading towards my hotel, cruising down a busy boulevard which had a concrete barrier heading down the middle. People were sleeping all over the streets. In the middle of the boulevard, on the pavement. Again, hundreds of people just sleeping everywhere. Some were starting to wake up, some had gathered in groups, poring buckets of water over their heads. Suddenly, my rickshaw driver then pulled a u turn, and ended up heading back up this busy boulevard, against the traffic, against 2 solid lanes of traffic! It was tense but we made it to the hotel ok, it turned out he had to go back on himself to get some sort of permit.

Delhi really is a crazy place. The old city is really nuts, although New Delhi is somewhat more relaxed with American style wild roads and lots of big boulevards... I didn't stay long though, not tempted by the pollution, the noise, the touts and most importantly the recent outbreak of Dengue fever!

I am now in Jodphur, a town in Rajasthan, a desert area. I have splashed out on a wicked room (6 pound a night) in an old 18th century havelli. There is an amazing 500 year old fort here, and from here I'll be heading to Jaipur and then Agra for the Taj Mahal, before flying down south to Goa...

Link to the previous post:

From the Golden Temple to Little Tibet!