I woke up in the wee hours on Saturday to the sound of a howling pack of dogs. This thought ran through my mind: on Saturday morning, I would tell Fariba and Troy that I had an upset stomach and would have to stay In the room. Yeah, I have to admit that is how freaked out I had been from walking the streets of Delhi the night before. However, my perception was soon to change.
Troy and I got up about 8:30 and went for a daylight walk around Connaught Circle. It was not busy a all. Very little traffic. Very few homeless lying about. We gathered that perhaps at some time during the night they return to their slum or shantytown. It began to make sense that they would hang out at Connaught at night rather than in the squalor of their home.
We saw that we had taken a wrong turn the night before. It turns out that the more 'upscale' part of Connaught had been to our left. This was the inner circle of Connaught. There were a number of stores with recognizable international brands as well as some upscale restaurants and offices. However, don't get me wrong, there was still a lot of dirt and general disorder. But the place looked a helluva lot better during the day than at night.
I was starting to feel better about our venture into Old Delhi. Troy and I went to check out the subway (the Metro) as it was our plan to ride the metro from Rajiv Chowk (the subway stop in the center of the circle) to Chandri Chowk, the metro stop in the heart of Old Delhi. We noticed that the entrance was heavily fortified with and armed soldier behind sandbags. As we got further down there was another army man with his rifle resting on top of the sandbags with the muzzle pointing towards the incoming patrons. There is then a security checkpoint where you are scanned and patted and your bag is scanned.
The security actually makes you feel more comfortable. Unfortunately, for India, terrorism is a much more real issue than it is in America. There are random bombings in crowded areas. I have not been able to ascertain who is responsible but it appears that there are various factions, not to mention the Pakistanis. Nevertheless in this country of one billion people, the number of terrorist assaults is infinitesimally low and is not a concern.
The metro was clean and air conditioned. Troy and I bought the tokens for our later trip to Chandri Chowk. The trip was 25 cents each way!
We went back to the hotel and told Fariba that things were looking much better in daylight. After breakfast, we headed out to catch the metro to Old Delhi. The metro is extremely clean, cool and well organized. We got on board for the three stop ride to Old Delhi. There were extremely few westerners. My guess is they are intimidated by the idea of riding a subway in a third world country. However, the subway is highly recommended by me.
Once disembarking at Chandri Chowk, we emerged to the scene of the chaos of Old Delhi that is somehow organized on it's own bizarre plain of understanding.
I had this plan in my mind that we would walk Old Delhi and visit the various bazaars for which it is world famous, see the red fort and the Jami Masjid, a mosque capable of holding 25000 worshipers. We quickly realized that there were hundreds of bicycle rickshaw drivers waiting to take people into Old Delhi. There were very few western tourists and almost all of them were European.
We started out turning down the pleas of the rickshaw drivers but one persistent man got our attention when he said hwe would take us to at the spice market for 100 rupees. We finally said yes and boarded the rickshaw. Our driver bit off a lot to haul three large Americans through Old Delhi. It turned out to be a great choice to hire this guy.
He peddled us through the extremely crowded streets into the heart of the spice market which turned out to be at least half of a km from the metro station. Amidst hundreds of spice stores, he happened to take us to one in particular. Of course, we were aware that this was clearly a prearranged deal. The store was very user friendly and clearly marketed towards westerners. The spices (thousands of choices) were prepackaged in sealed bags. This contrasted with the surrounding stores where huge quantities of spices were being sold by the pound. Nevertheless, we made a selection of spices and negotiated a deal. I am especially happy that we got cardamom and ginger to make chai masala, tea with milk and spices.
Our driver was awaiting. It became apparent that he would be with us for the day. We went for a walk down the spice street and he waited for us at the first store. It is amazing to smell the aromas and see the product and the interaction of the people. We got back with our driver and he took us through comparable sections of town where there would be lengthy clusters of stores selling basically the same thing, whether it be spices, saris or jewelry. At each location, our driver would take us to his designated store and we would get to hear the sales pitches. We went to a jewelry store and a sari store.
We weaved through the alleys and streets seeing so many interesting things. Fariba bought a large beaded necklace, a Hindu mala. They were out of the one she wanted and they had a guy climb up into a hole in the ceiling to get another one from the inventory.
At the sari store, the guys offered us beer and water. We succumbed to the water idea and they knew they had us. We ended up buying several items. I even got a ceremonial Indian shirt that I will probably never wear.
The driver took us to the Jami Masjid but it was temporarily closed to non-Muslims for lunchtime prayer. We decided to go eat lunch. I asked for Karim's which I had found in one of my tour books and the driver kmew where it was an took us. It was a Muslim run operation. From reading the history on the menu, w learned that the ancestor of the proprietor had been the chef for the last of the Mughal dynasty. Thereafter the restaurant was later started around 1913 and had been in continuous operation since that time. And it was easy to understand why.
The restaurant was actually spread between four or five buildings with a busy alley in the middle. There were two seating areas on the right of the alley and the cooking area and another seating area on the left,.
The cooking area was a site to behold. In the center of the cooking area in the back was a tandoori specifically set up for cooking the bread. A tandoori is a round clay oven built into the ground and which is heated by charcoal. The man cooking the bread sat above the tandoori opening. Next to him were two men who were among the bread dough from scratch and then flattening it into patties and tossing the patties to the bread poker. He would then do a final prep on the patty and then reach into the oven and stick it to the side of the oven. He would use long metal prongs to remove the cooked bread and quickly sling it too the first guy who would then get it to the waiter for table delivery.
Other guys were tending very large metal pots set at an angle over charcoal fueled heaters. They were making the various stews on these.
The restaurant was clean despite being an open air facility on an alley in Delhi. I ordered a lamb stew which combined with the fresh garlic naan was phenomenal. I had to sort through various small bones but the lamb and gravy had a flavor that was unsurpassable. Fariba and Troy had the tandoori chicken which was a whole chicken each and which was simply amazing. We got out of the place for a total of about $20. If you go to Delhi, you must go to Karim's and it is worth a trip to Delhi just to go to Karim's.
After Karim's we went to the Jami Masjid. Upon admittance we gave up our shoes to the shoe wallah, the shoe tender. We entered the mosque and found a cool place to sit down. The only problem was that there was a worker who would shoo everyone who was sitting by tapping a stick on the ground. These workers at the mosque don't speak, they simply make guttural noises. We soon figured from his obnoxious stick tapping that we we were not to sit on this particular area.
Troy went to the top of the minaret for a view of Old Delhi. Fariba and I befriended some Indian kids who appeared to be just hanging out at the mosque. We shot some video and showed them how they look on video. They were fascinated.
When leaving the mosque, I gave the shoe wallah ten rupees as a tip (25 cents). He registered his disgust with my tip by letting out a painful sounding howl but i just kept moving. He wasn't really watching our shoes in that there was no system for identifying shoes with their owner. Regardless, the vibe at the mosque was a bit negative, perhaps indicative of the gap between the western world and Islam.
We then rode through a section where there were numerous shops selling different auto parts. Interestingly many of the store owners each had their own goat. The goats were almost the size of cows and lounged obliviously amidst all the action.
We drove back to the Chandni Chowk station. We asked the rickshaw driver how much (he now had driven us for over four hours through the grueling streets) and he said 'whatqever you think'. Good ploy. I gave him 1000 rupees (about $25) and he seemed happy. I could tell he wanted a bit more so I gave him 100 more rupees and he seemed extremely happy.
As we had come into the station area on the rickshaw, we noticed that a huge pile of garbage from the morning (about one-fourth acre) had been whittled down to something manageable. Troy commented that people had been sifting through the garbage since we had first arrived and that they had divided it up so as to take it to the various recyclers. What was left was left for the cows and the pigs.
As we we entered the station, several small children began to beg us for money. It became almost like a game as we waited to buy our metro tokens with the station attendant attempting to wave them away. I eventually gave them all some coins that I had in my pocket.
This time when we got underground there was a huge crowd and we all pushed onto th crowded subway car. And then we realized that we were on the women's only car. Whoops! Women can ride on any car but they also have one that is women only so that they don't have to put up with harassment from the men.
Upon arriving at Rajiv Chowk (center of Connaught Circle) we emerged to see a number of children who were begging for money. Fariba had bought an orange soda that was halfway done and she gave it to one of the kids. We bought a couple of bottles of water and Troy took it to the kids. He said they had already divied up the soda and mixed it with some water to make it last longer.
We headed on to our room and cleaned up a bit and just laid around for a while. I ventured out to find Berco's, a chinese restaurant I had found on the Internet. I walked all the way around Connaught and realized that it had suddenly become the hang out for early 20's aged Indian men and women trying to act cool. Many of the women wore blue jeans. There was a lot of shopping going on and the folks asking for money were far outnumbered.
I got a menu from Berco's and we made our choices and I walked back to Berco's and placed the order and it was later delivered to our room. It was great tasting though perhaps a bit too heavy on the sauce.
We had leftovers and I took it to the street and set it next to a woman who had a couple of children. She quickly grabbed the food and took her children to an isolated location so they could eat the food without harrassment.
We had grown in one day to love Delhi, with all of it's faults and sadness, like we have grown to love all of India, good and bad.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment