Impressions of Delhi

We had meant to blog a bit more about Cairo and to conclude that it was not for the fainthearted but lying in bed last night and thinking about Delhi I take it back, Cairo was a doddle compared. We walked wherever we wanted, we used the metro (although we never saw a single obvious non-Eqyptian on it) we were out in the evening sitting with a tea, we went into the old area and its markets, it felt OK and we only came nearly adrift getting to the Pyramids where we met the oldest Pyramid selling scheme in the book - taken to a 'government office' where we were told we had to take a camel/horse/buggy to see them 'its the desert" "its 15km to see them' etc etc. We got out of it but it was the only real problem we faced.

But Delhi is something else, simple chaos in the streets, large distances between places, no understandable public transport, the crappiest vehicles plying for hire, human life on the streets in more forms that you can imagine, horses, dogs, dogs, cows, goats and sheep. We have copped out and hired a driver Subash to take us around, its the only way to do it. And we had a fairly expensive hotel after I read some horror stories about Delhi's cheap hotels on the web.

There are the odd moments however - we heard a tremendous noise outside our hotel one evening and looking out from our fourth floor balcony saw a wedding party moving around the block to a large open banquetting area opposite, the groom on a large carriage pulled by two white horses, a huge number of people banging drums, playing trumpets and dancing wildly carrying lights and stopping every now and then to let off fireworks, it almost made Delhi seem human. And I was amused when we were stopped interminably at a traffic light to be assailed by the usual sellers of cloths, large bunches of peacock feathers (which look splendid) but also by a young man with a pile of novels all wrapped in plastic including the Booker prize win
ner and William Dalrymples City of Djinns about Delhi - both of which i have read - and many others that could have been carefully chosen by a literary critic for him.

Brian

What can i say about our two days here? Well the traffic is asstounding, Brian said its like a ball bearing run, where all the balls just manage to move around each other and really it is. Motor bikes with ttwo adults and children wedged between them, the man has a crash helmet but no one ellse does, a woman riding side saddle on a motor bike and holding a baby, tuk tuk's with upwards of ten passengers and a driver, carts pulled by poor old horses or very large bullocks with huge horns. All the time the noise of car horns, they hoot at each other all the time, from little toots to long sonorous blasts, that was Delhi and our journey to agra today has confirmed the though the traffic thins out slightly you hav to factor in herds of sheep, loads of donkeys, camel carts and lorries driving the wrong way up the fast lane.

This makes it sound as though all we have done is drive aboutbut we have seen fantastic monuments, all sorts of wonderful buildings set in tranquil expanses of green with beautiful green parakeets flying about, monkeys and the most delightful little squirels hopping arround.

Today we have seen the agra fort, hugh and wonderful and seen the Taj Mahal fron the top of the Fort, looking along the river. Tomorrow the Taj at dawn.

Tess

ps managed to add some pics see blogs below and to this one the pics are:

the wedding celebration outside our hotel in Delhi, monkeys at the Presidents mansion and Subhash and Tessa by the final steps of Gandhi prior to his assasination