Revisiting India - Blog Post 2

Delhi: A Beautiful Chaos

I remember the first time I landed in India almost as if it was yesterday. The signs said Indira Gandhi airport, but my boarding card called it Delhi Airport. Culture shock is the choice words friends had used to prepare me for the experience. We had secured a hotel in Mahipalpur, a district in Delhi right next to the Airport. A local Delhian I talked to in the airport recommended that we take the subway. Faster and cheaper than getting scammed, he said while smiling. Dodged our first tourist trap right there I thought, unfortunately I hadn’t seen the hotel yet.

I now know exactly what adventurers mean when they talk about cockroaches on the wall and blood stained bed linens, and let's not forget the sewage smell from the street outside. What a disaster! Very early next morning, 4:30 am I think, we finally escaped the sewage and the cockroaches. We walked a bit around Mahipalpur before finding a subway stop to escape the place for Delhi town centre, it's the least touristy place I think I ever saw in my life. “The city slum” one of my friends in Delhi later told me they call Mahipalpur.

One of only 2 pictures I took while we were in Mahipalpur. After arriving at the so called hotel, we escaped away as quickly as we could, and spent the rest of the evening in this bar we found a few blocks away at the edge of Mahipalpur. You can see boye drinking the most common beer found around Northern India the Kingfisher lager.

At this point you might be thinking to yourself, God why would I ever go visit India? Well, keep with me. After hopping in a tuk-tuk and driving straight East from Mahipalpur, we visited some ancient tombs recommended to us by google maps. We then decided we wanted to see the Qutb Minar landmark and then the Garden of Five Senses. I remember feeling like the garden gave me a strong feeling of tranquillity after being feeling a little anxious for the last several hours. After looking at the Delhi couples.

Boye and I looking at the ancient ruins of the Jamali Kamali Masjid, a mosque built ontop of the Tomb of the namesake of the mosque. This should not be onfused for the much more famous and more extravagant Humayun's Tomb also found in Delhi. You will come to notice there's a lot more pictures of Boye than me. I was the most vigilant of the two to document our escapades.

My own picture of the Qutb Minar was very blurry and tilted, so here is a better picture fetched from Pixabay. Big thanks to the photographer Suanlian Tangpua.

I couldn't find any pictures inside the Garden of Tranquility. I'm pretty sure this first picture in this slide is from outside the park. It was a very well kept and beautiful park awash in colors. The three other pictures are just of me and Boye on a walkabout in Southern Delhi.

After coming to the town centre we met one of the guys I clearly could describe with such typical Hindi words, such as a guru. We had booked ourselves into a random hotel a friend of Boye had recommended near Paharganj. Great it was not, yet maybe closer to paradise than to Mahipalpur. This amazing tuk-tuk driver, I hate that I can’t recall his name, saved us out of Paharganj and brought us to the office of a travel consultant. He warned us never to go back to Paharganj, they are all “scammers and thugs there” he said with a serious look on his face (Many Delhians consider Paharganj to be a tourist trap and an inauthentic market, and they usually recommend to rather visit Chandni Chowk). I begged him to accept my tips of 1000 rupees, he strictly declined anything more than the 50 rupees (~0.5£) he was owed for driving us around for the last 1.5 hours. What a hero this man of unbending moral principles.

A overhead picture of the bazaar mainstreet in Paharganj, Delhi. This picture does not illustrate well how packed the streets where at the time of day Boye and I arrived in Paharganj. I also find it hilarious, but also to the point, that the Tripsavvy.com article where I found this picture has a last sub header reading "Getting out of Paharganj". Delhians generally speaking see Paharganj as little more than a tourist trap. This picture was fetched from Hadynyah via Getty Images.

Both exhausted after spending the last approximately 12 hours in chaos, Boye and I stepped into the building and we met our first soon to be friend in India. Omer was the name of the guy now responsible to rescue us from certain doom at the hands of the Neutral Chaotic forces that dominated the urban Delhi landscape Boye and I had stepped into, woefully unprepared for the reality of this foreign place we had adventure to. Two Norwegian ex-students turned adventurers almost overnight.

Omer, a Kasmiri man in his early 30’s, listened to me and Boye, tired as we were, explaining our misfortune of the last 12 hours or so. He laughed so heartfelt and friendly, no one could have taken offence. Omer helped us plan out a travel itinerary on the spot. Luckily Boye and I had truly prepared ourselves in the area of what we knew we wanted to see attraction wise in Northern India. If only our Delhi hotel bookings for the first 2 nights were as well prepared. Omer drew up a crude basic map on a typical blank piece of paper, a map showing Northern India, and the location of spots we were now going to visit. We could now go sleep in a bed somewhere Omer had fixed for us, and then spend the next day sightseeing a bit in Delhi, before as I remember Omer saying it, “We need to get you guys the hell out of Delhi.”

My good friend Omer. Boye and I didn't know it yet, but that first day in Delhi we met someone who would become a life long buddy. I'm looking forward to visiting him and his family in Kashmir, when I finally go back to India.

Delhi is a lovely place to go sightseeing when you have a personal driver taking you from A to B. Our Hindu driver, named Neelam, was quite the character. Friendly as can be and very talkative, he spoke good English. Our plan for the day was to see Red Fort, Chandni Chowk (a traditional Delhi market), Akshardam (Hindu Temple) and Gandhi Museum. Below follows some more slideshows to showcase our sightseeing trip the second and last day we were in Delhi.

A slideshow showing our trip to the Chandni Chowk. A famous traditional market in Eastern New Delhi.

A short slideshow showing the Red Fort. This first picture shows our rickshaw guide talking about the Red Fort, while we sit in the back snapping our pictures, while also listening to his stories. I don't remember his name, but this was an excellent ride 5/5 stars.

On our way to the Gandhi museum it started pouring down. Rain does also happen in Delhi at times.

Boye in the gardens outside the Gandhi museum.

Even someone with 6 years experience from studying history at the University like myself could learn a lot at the Gandhi museum. The different exhibitions are well planned and laid out. You get a good impression of the political movement lead by Gandhi and Neru in the early 20th century, but focus was also put upon Gandhi's fight against the caste system. There was also a whole part talking about his wife and other women in his family, not ignoring the women within the free India movement.

A picture of the main hindu temple within the Akshardam complex. The temple is surrounded by a vast and impressive garden, and there is also several other major buildings within the complex. The Akshardam foundation claims that the complex houses "milennia of hindu cultural relics and spiritual objects". The temple is one of of several pilgrimage destinations within the Hindu religion. Read more here Since it's illegal for guest to take any pictures within the complex I dont have any pictures of anything inside. This picture was fetched from Wikimedia Commons.

The pictures above illustrate what can be expected from visiting these 4 tourist attractions. It's illegal to bring any cellphone or camera in to see the Swaminarayan Akshardham temple, so I don't have any personal pictures of that, but Neelam was not wrong in my opinion when he claimed that Akshardham is a more impressive monument than even the Taj Mahal (which we saw later in our journey). We also drove past a few other landmarks together with Neelam, notably Raj Ghat and India Gate. All in all it was a pretty great second day in India. But I was already eagerly looking forward to the train ride early the next morning. We were headed out of Delhi state and into “the land of many kings.”

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