Saturday, January 05, 2008
We have been in India less that 48 hours as I write this, and I know already in order to keep this in any sort of readable length only a bit will get put down to paper as it were. But the four of us are already in love with the place.
The contrast was immediate as we left from a beautifully new air port in Bangkok and landed in the old Indira Ghandi airport in Delhi. However, it is under construction for a major 0verhaul, we were through customs and picked up luggage and met our tour company contact in under 30 minutes. Toronto and Barbados take note.
I think we had some sense of the traffic chaos that would await on the journey from the airport to hotel. The painted lines on the highway seem to mean nothing as we fought our way for space with the trucks and busses seeminly taking aim at each other.
But the whole scene unfolded the next morning. We stayed in the Hotel Claridges in New Delhi--shades of London in the name I thought-- It was a lovely place, with a slight evidence of past colonial lifeand sheltering the guests from the life on the roads. We had an especially good guide,Sanjeev, who loaded us into a small bus and off we went down the wide avenues of New Delhi with its ovely tree filled streets, and round abouts, bungalows, Edwardian buldings --as Maggie said"I wasn't expecting this". The British thought about building a new Delhi around 1911, and Sir Edward Luytan laid it all out. It was thought about in the early 1900s, really built between the two World Wars, and by 1947 the British were gone. They left India with the trains, postal service, a continuing large beauocracy(always a mixed blessing) and the majo rreason for their new found success in the 21st century.. the English language!
We drove for a short wall enjoying all the lovely avenues when the world abruptly changed and we hit the wall in Delhi. Delhi is a very old place filled with hundreds of little lanes(I could hardly call them streets) lined with stalls, people, dogs, tuk tuks, big and little busses, bicycle rickshaws, hawkers and all backed with the continuous sounds of horns. It is some sort of a slight of hand trick to get all those vechicles in that little bit of road.
We stopped to have a tour of a very large mosque (the second largest in Asia. And while we are on the topic, India is the second largest Muslim country in the world, the first being Indonesia)
right in the middles of the shopping district. Then Sanjeev informed us we were going to continue our journey through the streets in Rickshaws.. It was quite an exhiliarating (!)experience and the only way to see the little shops. However, you are always aware of how fragile life is and and wondering just where you put your fly out travel insurance policy. The streets are grouped according to catagory, one for fabric, one for saris, one for gold, one for sewing machines etc. Although proper census taking is difficult it is estimated Delhi has about 14 million people. and all of them were out shopping on Friday morning!
We had a change of rickshaw due to a flat tire, and after an exchange we headed ON THE MAIN ROAD to the Red Fort of Delhi. This now involved many buses, and trucks and us. Only the very best of action movies could actually give some idea of just how much fun and fearful this whole outing was.
The Red Fort is in a lovely park, lovely and calm and peaceful while outside absolutely chaos reigns. We made a respectful visit to the burial spot of Mahatma Ghandi, also in a lovely park and collapsed back in the hotel to try and digest it all. But for sure there are some days in your life when your really feel alive. This was one.
The contrast was immediate as we left from a beautifully new air port in Bangkok and landed in the old Indira Ghandi airport in Delhi. However, it is under construction for a major 0verhaul, we were through customs and picked up luggage and met our tour company contact in under 30 minutes. Toronto and Barbados take note.
I think we had some sense of the traffic chaos that would await on the journey from the airport to hotel. The painted lines on the highway seem to mean nothing as we fought our way for space with the trucks and busses seeminly taking aim at each other.
But the whole scene unfolded the next morning. We stayed in the Hotel Claridges in New Delhi--shades of London in the name I thought-- It was a lovely place, with a slight evidence of past colonial lifeand sheltering the guests from the life on the roads. We had an especially good guide,Sanjeev, who loaded us into a small bus and off we went down the wide avenues of New Delhi with its ovely tree filled streets, and round abouts, bungalows, Edwardian buldings --as Maggie said"I wasn't expecting this". The British thought about building a new Delhi around 1911, and Sir Edward Luytan laid it all out. It was thought about in the early 1900s, really built between the two World Wars, and by 1947 the British were gone. They left India with the trains, postal service, a continuing large beauocracy(always a mixed blessing) and the majo rreason for their new found success in the 21st century.. the English language!
We drove for a short wall enjoying all the lovely avenues when the world abruptly changed and we hit the wall in Delhi. Delhi is a very old place filled with hundreds of little lanes(I could hardly call them streets) lined with stalls, people, dogs, tuk tuks, big and little busses, bicycle rickshaws, hawkers and all backed with the continuous sounds of horns. It is some sort of a slight of hand trick to get all those vechicles in that little bit of road.
We stopped to have a tour of a very large mosque (the second largest in Asia. And while we are on the topic, India is the second largest Muslim country in the world, the first being Indonesia)
right in the middles of the shopping district. Then Sanjeev informed us we were going to continue our journey through the streets in Rickshaws.. It was quite an exhiliarating (!)experience and the only way to see the little shops. However, you are always aware of how fragile life is and and wondering just where you put your fly out travel insurance policy. The streets are grouped according to catagory, one for fabric, one for saris, one for gold, one for sewing machines etc. Although proper census taking is difficult it is estimated Delhi has about 14 million people. and all of them were out shopping on Friday morning!
We had a change of rickshaw due to a flat tire, and after an exchange we headed ON THE MAIN ROAD to the Red Fort of Delhi. This now involved many buses, and trucks and us. Only the very best of action movies could actually give some idea of just how much fun and fearful this whole outing was.
The Red Fort is in a lovely park, lovely and calm and peaceful while outside absolutely chaos reigns. We made a respectful visit to the burial spot of Mahatma Ghandi, also in a lovely park and collapsed back in the hotel to try and digest it all. But for sure there are some days in your life when your really feel alive. This was one.
# posted by katie @ 4:59 AM 
