India Part 1: Delhi and Agra

As I write this I am currently in sitting in an internet café in the Indian city of Haridwar. We have now been traveling for 10 days with 5 of them within India. So as you can guess, it’s been a pretty crazy 5 days.

Here’s a quick summery of our trip so far. I wanted to upload pictures but unfortunately the internet connection I’m using is a bit slow for that. Maybe next time.

The Flight

In order to get to India from Los Angeles it took one long flight. First we flew 14 hours to Taiwan. After a brief stop we flew another 5 hours to Singapore. After a 6 hour stop there we flew another 6 hours to Delhi.

While it was a long flight it wasn’t so bad because Singapore Air is the best airline ever. Nothing beats killing 25 hours by watching your choice of movie and drinking “Singapore Sling” cocktails.
India is 11.5 hours ahead of Calgary so I had some serious jet lag for the first couple of days. But I think I’ve finally shaken it.

Travel Buddies

So far the travel companions have been working out good. Kiran’s Hindi skills are especially useful. The only downside is that I’ve become extremely lazy. Whenever there is even the slightest bit of communication problems I just have Kiran handle it.

For example, if Taxi diver does not understand what I said, have Kiran give directions. Hotel worker not understand our request, have Kiran sort it out. Richard asking too many questions, make Kiran do the answering.

The Food

The food’s been ok. Deciding what to eat has been a bit tricky though. Each time I go to eat something I have to decide: 1) Will this make me sick? 2) Will this be too damn spicy to me? 3) (If meat) Am I sure this meat is from the animal I think it is?

So far I’ve managed to avoid getting sick (though the toilet and I have been spending a lot of time together). However, Richard wasn’t so lucky and he had to sit a day out due to sickness.

Spiciness on the other hand has been kicking my ass over and over again. Finally I think that enough of my taste buds have been destroyed that I can eat and enjoy India food.

Meat actually hasn’t been such an issue since most things are vegetarian. The strange thing is that I actually don’t miss meat. Unlike western veg foods, Indian’s actually make veg good.

Even the MacDonald’s has a largely veg menu. In fact it doesn’t even serve beef here.
Now beer is something which takes more effort to obtain than in other countries. Even when you do find it you have to be sure to read the label.

For example, the one time I attempted to get beer I went to the local beer stand and purchased a bottle of “10000 – Strong Beer”. It was only at home did I release that my “Strong Beer” was actually non-alcoholic and resembled tonic water more than beer.

The Driving

Indian driving is quite similar to Egyptian driving and I can tell you, I did not miss Egyptian driving what so ever.

India driving can be summarized in one word: chaos. Basically everyone is dodging each other trying to get down the street. You have to see it to believe it.

This is best represented by the one vehicle which is distinctly Indian: the autorichot. These 3 wheeled natural gas powered vehicles can be found weaving between traffic at all time.

Trust me. No ride in California can compete with the rush one gets from a ride in an autorichot.

The Heat

Holy crap it’s hot. The average temperature every day has been between 40-45 degrees Celsius. It’s a good thing waters cheap since I’ve taken to drinking about 4 litres of water every day to a avoid collapsing.

At this point I think the only thing keeping me alive is my hat and my spf 50 sunscreen.

A Country of Contrasts

Now it’s become cliché to refer to India as “A Country of Contrasts”. But there’s a good reason it’s called that because India is one messed up country.

It’s surreal to see the poor and old side by side with the new and modern. Take for example the place where we activated Kiran’s cell phone. The store was located at the back window of an old beat up house. The only way you would think it was a cell phone store was because it had a sheet of paper that said “Cell Phone Repair” taped to the wall.

Sights like these are extremely common in India.

Delhi

We arrived in Delhi on May 5th. If you look a map you will notice that Delhi is often marked New Delhi. That’s because Delhi is really two cities shoved together. Old Delhi is made up ancient (generally poor) areas whereas New Delhi is quite modern and contains all the business centers. So technically New Delhi is the capital of India but there is no clear border separating it from Old Delhi.

We stayed in the Paharganj area in Delhi which is located in on the supposed border between New and Old Dehli. Paharganj is the standard place for backpackers to stay since pretty much all the cheap hotels are located there.

On that note, if you’re wondering what happened to all the hippies from the 60s we found them. They’re at the Paharganj area in Delhi.

The cool thing about our hotel was a bazaar was located just outside so there everything was really convenient. It was also pretty surreal to leave your hotel and enter a street filled with people, dogs, motorcycles, autorichots, shops and even the odd cow.

However it also meant that we were going to get fairly hassled whenever we left our hotel.
While in Delhi we hit all the standard tourist sites. The Red Fort was most amazing because while we were there, a rain storm hit. We were standing in line to enter the fort when all of suddenly we were engulfed by a wall of dust. The rain started soon after as we crowded in the Red Fort. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen to see the fort in the rain.

My other favorite sight was Qutub Minor which is basically an area made up of various ruins. It’s always fun to climb on something that is over 500 years old.

The Lotus temple, Jantar Mantar and Indian Parliament were also pretty bad ass.

Agra

Agra is a city located about 4 hours away from Delhi. Many of India’s most famous ruins are located there. In order to save effort we did a tour that left 6am and returned to Delhi at about 11pm. We did this on May 9th.

The main site of Agra is the famous Taj Muhal and I can confirm it lives up to the hype. I got goose bumps when I first saw it. It’s amazing how such it can have such a simplistic design yet be so intricate.

Other major sites were Sikandra (Akbar’s Tomb) and Agra’s Red Fort. Both sites were also awe inspiring. Any other country and they would be the countries most famous landmark. However, they definably come second when compared to the Taj Mahal.

Next Time: Haridwar

As I mentioned before we are currently in the Hindu holy city of Haridwar. It’s located about 4 hours by train north of Delhi and we’ve been here since May 10th.

We are staying here till May 15th and then we’re off to Jaisalmer. I’ll give a summery of Haridwar in my next blog post.