Days 3-5
Well these have been an interesting few days around Delhi. I think its fair to say that our view of Delhi has come completely full circle, as the negative now seem to be outweighing the positives in India's capital.
But I will start where I left off from my last post and that was with Delhi's metro system. Just as we heard, it was clean, efficient and unbelievably cheap! It is a total contrast to the streets outside, and outside New Delhi metro station is interesting to say the least. It is an open latrine and the smell of urine was so fierce I could still smell it a few hours later as I was having my dinner, my poor wife almost threw up on the spot. Luckily I didn't see anyone going for the long toilet or evidence of that but I believe it happens as well. In any case, after we passed through the metal detectors the metro was a sea of calm, it was cool and no street vendors, perhaps this was the oasis that Connaught Place was supposed to be. Both of our tickets cost 32rupees for 2 (40pence) and as we entered the slick train we found that the cabins were tall and air-conditioned, although the holding straps were a bit low for my liking. Twelve smooth stops later and we arrived at Qutub Minar, a UNESCO world heritage site and the headquarters of the Delhi Sultnate. The Sultnate was a group of sucessive rulers and dynasties of Delhi, but more significantly they were the first Muslim rulers. For some reason that I dont quite understand, history deems the Mughals a different era to the Sulnate but I guess it was their grip and consolidation of Northern India that deemed them more significant. Indeed the remnants of the Mughal era which was shorter are more impressive and influential than the Sultnate. I guess the Sultnate dynasties were too busy being overrun by each other to do make any lasting contribution to history. However with all that said they did manage to build a huge tower called the Qutub Minar, which although heavily restored is still mightily impressive. It was almost identical to my mind's depiction of the Tower of Babel in the Bible, which as all you good Bible readers will know was knocked down by God, and just like the Tower of Babel, Qutub Minar got damaged from a few rattles from lightning over the centuries meaning that the latest bout of restoring is just another repair job maintaining the tower. The rest of the site is extensive and worth a walk around but in truth there is nothing more interesting that the Qutub Minar.
Most of the tourists there were Indians and they found us very interesting, the stares you can get used to but the requests for photographs were fine at first because we could ask for one back but it starting to get annoying and during our visit to our next site, the Lotus Temple were we had to draw the line. The Lotus temple was inspired by my birth and construction began immediately the next day! It was complete in 1986 and its funcky Lotus design is not dis-similar to the other 20th century architecture designs such as as the Sydney Opera house, It reminded me of a giant plastic flower and wasn't overly fussed on it but then I found out that it is actually made from marble, not plastic. In any case it seemed like we were becoming the main attraction as the requests for photographs became too much and we had to start refusing people. I think it was bothering me more than my wife as she seemed to be the main attraction, I was actually excluded from a few photographs! I got suspicious (No! not jealous!) so we decided to limit the photographs.
The photographs were a small problem though in comparison to the touts and scammers. Every Tuktuk driver seems intent on scamming you out of your cash, as well as all the street vendors. I will go through our attempt to buy a train ticket yesterday at the train station. We decided we wanted to take the train to the desert state of Rajastan and we imagined that it was just a case of going up to the train station and buying a ticket, so naively we tried to do this. We walked up to what we though was the station entrance and a chap who appeared to be helping people put their luggage through the security scanner, stops us and asked us what we wanted, we told the helpful fellow our purpose and he starting telling us about the Government Tourist office in Connaught Place He then hailed us a tuktuk which he said was a government fare of 20rupees. Now I was a bit suspicious as I had heard about the scams offices in Connaught Place. But this guys story seemed to check out as he had a map showing the office and he seemed to be a worker there. When we thanked him he replied "No No its my duty" so he seemed a genuine enough. We arrived at Connaught Place and were welcomed in by the people that work there. This set off alarm bells in my head, why were we being welcomed into a Government office? We went up stairs and there was a rather smooth charming advisor there telling us about all the scams that people had suffered, this only confirmed my suspicions and from then on it was just a case to see if he actually could get us train tickets, which of course he could do, but it was along with a package. We told him thanks but no thanks, which he made it quite difficult to do and used our cheap ride to Connaght Place as an opportunity to get some lunch and do some clothes shopping. After doing a bit of research that afternoon about the scams we found that there is a tourist office upstairs in the train station, but the scammers and touts will do everything in their power to stop you from getting there, but it is there! So we set off again to try and find the tourist office and despite almost being deflected for a second time we found the office, bought our tickets and we finally had our way out of Delhi.
Another scam we suffered yesterday was a lump of shit suddenly appearing on my shoe just as there was a shoe cleaner around! After cleaning it off he tried to charge me 1500rupees for the pleasure. He got 30, which was still too much in hindsight. Hindsight is a great thing with these scams but the scammers are very convincing and they have backup people all around, "Yes it was one of these birds that shit" I heard from a "passer-by" but in hindsight it wasn't, it was a lump of cow dung that he must have had in his bag, nice! As a farmer's son this was an elementary error I know, but in fairness the cow dung as with almost everything else is a little different in India!
Back on the sightseeing front we went to the Presidents Palace and India gate yesterday, which I mightily impressed with. The two famous structures are build at either end of the Rajpath, which is a wide tree boulevard, with various regal looking parks government buildings on each side built on a slowing rising hill with India Gate at the bottom and the Palace at the top. Its almost identical to the Champs d'Elyesee in Paris and it surely must have been the inspiration for the English Architect Edwin Lutyen. However once again the main site was a side story to something else, as a cleanup was underway after protests regarding the "Coalgate" (yes I thought it was about toothpaste too!) scandal, which is all over the news and is threatening to bring down the Government
Today we have checked out of our hotel and we are spending the afternoon in the backerpacker's bazaar of Pharaganj market, getting getting lunch, writing blogs and waiting to take our first trip on the famous Indian Railway system, which will be a night train to Rajastan.
Well these have been an interesting few days around Delhi. I think its fair to say that our view of Delhi has come completely full circle, as the negative now seem to be outweighing the positives in India's capital.
But I will start where I left off from my last post and that was with Delhi's metro system. Just as we heard, it was clean, efficient and unbelievably cheap! It is a total contrast to the streets outside, and outside New Delhi metro station is interesting to say the least. It is an open latrine and the smell of urine was so fierce I could still smell it a few hours later as I was having my dinner, my poor wife almost threw up on the spot. Luckily I didn't see anyone going for the long toilet or evidence of that but I believe it happens as well. In any case, after we passed through the metal detectors the metro was a sea of calm, it was cool and no street vendors, perhaps this was the oasis that Connaught Place was supposed to be. Both of our tickets cost 32rupees for 2 (40pence) and as we entered the slick train we found that the cabins were tall and air-conditioned, although the holding straps were a bit low for my liking. Twelve smooth stops later and we arrived at Qutub Minar, a UNESCO world heritage site and the headquarters of the Delhi Sultnate. The Sultnate was a group of sucessive rulers and dynasties of Delhi, but more significantly they were the first Muslim rulers. For some reason that I dont quite understand, history deems the Mughals a different era to the Sulnate but I guess it was their grip and consolidation of Northern India that deemed them more significant. Indeed the remnants of the Mughal era which was shorter are more impressive and influential than the Sultnate. I guess the Sultnate dynasties were too busy being overrun by each other to do make any lasting contribution to history. However with all that said they did manage to build a huge tower called the Qutub Minar, which although heavily restored is still mightily impressive. It was almost identical to my mind's depiction of the Tower of Babel in the Bible, which as all you good Bible readers will know was knocked down by God, and just like the Tower of Babel, Qutub Minar got damaged from a few rattles from lightning over the centuries meaning that the latest bout of restoring is just another repair job maintaining the tower. The rest of the site is extensive and worth a walk around but in truth there is nothing more interesting that the Qutub Minar.
Another scam we suffered yesterday was a lump of shit suddenly appearing on my shoe just as there was a shoe cleaner around! After cleaning it off he tried to charge me 1500rupees for the pleasure. He got 30, which was still too much in hindsight. Hindsight is a great thing with these scams but the scammers are very convincing and they have backup people all around, "Yes it was one of these birds that shit" I heard from a "passer-by" but in hindsight it wasn't, it was a lump of cow dung that he must have had in his bag, nice! As a farmer's son this was an elementary error I know, but in fairness the cow dung as with almost everything else is a little different in India!
Back on the sightseeing front we went to the Presidents Palace and India gate yesterday, which I mightily impressed with. The two famous structures are build at either end of the Rajpath, which is a wide tree boulevard, with various regal looking parks government buildings on each side built on a slowing rising hill with India Gate at the bottom and the Palace at the top. Its almost identical to the Champs d'Elyesee in Paris and it surely must have been the inspiration for the English Architect Edwin Lutyen. However once again the main site was a side story to something else, as a cleanup was underway after protests regarding the "Coalgate" (yes I thought it was about toothpaste too!) scandal, which is all over the news and is threatening to bring down the Government
Today we have checked out of our hotel and we are spending the afternoon in the backerpacker's bazaar of Pharaganj market, getting getting lunch, writing blogs and waiting to take our first trip on the famous Indian Railway system, which will be a night train to Rajastan.
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