Hello Everyone

I have been traveling in India with my friends Kelli and Joe since July
18th. We stayed two days in Delhi, which was not as difficult and
dirty as I expected. Now, don't get me wrong it is very crowded and
dirty and overwhelming. But there were trees and grass and parks. Let me
take a few minutes to try to describe it to you. The tourist sites,
hotels, and restaurants were clean. There were tons of people asking you to
buy their merchandise but they usually went away after saying no for a
few times. There were lots of shops that had the typical three sided
concrete wall and a garage door as their front fourth wall. These
shops were for every purpose such as auto repair, pharmacy, clothing
store, grocery store, barber shop etc... There were all kinds of modes
of transportation such as bicycles, motorcycles, auto rickshaw, donkey
or horse drawn cart, cars, taxis, and multiple people seated on mopeds. These
drivers used their own horn language to communicate some understanding
of how they will all zoom past each other in many near misses.
Of course there are wild dogs, trash and rats everywhere. It is amazing to
watch. Since all of the above is pretty typical in many places in Asia
and Africa I did not feel India deserved it reputation as an extremely difficult place to travel.

So now let me try to describe the things about Delhi that stand out as
different from Asia and Africa. There are a lot more homeless people on the streets. There
are bodies everywhere, what you think is a pile of trash or rags in the
street gutter or sidewalk is often actually a person sleeping. There
are cows everywhere and even a lot of water buffalo, which no one harms
because they are considered sacred in Hindu religion. The tourist
sites are actually really spread out so you have to take a taxi to sightsee
and with the overwhelming amount of traffic it takes forever to go
anywhere. I never found a central downtown area that was pedestrian
friendly. Because of all this it is hard to get a grasp on Delhi,
instead it just feels large, disorganized and disconnected. The amount
of people, wild dogs, cows, numerous transportation vehicles and noise
does add up to make you feel very overwhelmed.

Therefore we took a nice long day trip to the Taj Mahal, it took 4 hrs to drive there by car.
One of Joe's coworkers friend offered to arrange a driver and to
show us around himself. Well this friend went missing at the Taj Mahal
and we searched for him for 6 hours. We ended up driving back with out him. We got back to Delhi
at midnight ate Indian food at a English pub and did not get to bed
until after 1am. The next day we went sight seeing around Delhi. We
decided to eat at an Indian restaurant that was ranked #14th in the
world in 1993 according to some obscure magazine hanging on there wall.
We had to wait an hour and a half because every big wig who came in got
seated before us. The staff was slow and rude. We finally left the
restaurant at midnight and decided we should all stay up since we had
to leave for the airport at 3am to catch our flight to Leh. I think you
get the general theme is that Delhi is overwhelming and tiring and we
are all ready for a relaxing place. I will write more later because I am out of time.

Take Care
Sarah



Journal Entry Delhi India Posted On: 7/19/2005