IN THE DELHI OF THE BEAST

Friday, February 6th at 21:05

NEW DELHI

New Delhi. Perhaps the dirtiest, loudest, busiest most crowded city in all the world...and we actually liked it! I can probably tell you that traveling to India is akin to climbing Mt. Everest. You need to prepare as much as possible in advance and you need to give yourself plenty of time to acclimate! Before coming to India, we had heard that people either love it or hate it. I am starting to understand why. I feel safe assuming that if you only visit for a short while you may be inclined to not like India very much. The longer you stay, the more you may start to become accustomed to the otherwise unaccustomable!

Having traveled the south of India for ten weeks, we decided to give ourself a bit of a break. Instead of taking an auto rickshaw at 3:30 in the morning, from Mysore to Bangalore, to catch a 38 to possibly46 hour train from Bangalore to Delhi, we opted to take a taxi from Gokulam, where the Ashtanga Institute was located, to the new Bangalore International Airport to catch a two and one half hour flight to New Delhi. To further spoil ourselves, we also arranged to have a driver, from the hotel where we were staying, pick us up at the airport. He even had a sign with our names on it, making us feel a bit like diplomats. Our driver's name was Charlie, and little did we know that he would be the driver to accompany us on fourteen days of our eighteen day Rajasthan car tour. Charlie is a bit of an anommolie in India being quiet, a bit portly and most of all, Catholic. He is mild mannered and incredibly honest and honorable. The perfect person to join us in a 4000 kilometer trek across northern India.

Back to New Delhi where our tour started. We stayed three nights right in the heart of Paharganj and steps from the Main Bazaar. An unpaved, uneven, ridiculously crowded thoroughfare that happened to have an even mix of sewage and muck loosely packed as a result of an ongoing improvement project. Upon arrival, we basically spent our time checking in, unpacking, finishing the coordination of our car tour, surfing the net and getting the lay of the land, which included being interviewed by every cycle rickshaw driver and shop owner. The next morning we would awake early to reunite with Charlie for a free car tour of the sites of New Delhi, compliments of the hotel owner, Mr. Badrajah, who I think is rather fond of us. New Delhi is a major moving metropolis with over 12,000,000 people hustling and bustling every day, hordes of traffic and who knows how many rupees changing hands per hour. Fast paced, heavily polluted and signs of new wealth, industry and development everywhere. However, there is plenty of rich architecture and history for even the most discernible pallet. In a period of nine hours, we were able to visit the Red Fort, Lal Qila, then across the street to the Jain temple, Lal Mandir, where one has to leave their shoes, and anything made out of leather at the door, then through Chandni Chowk (Old Delhi's main bazaar and market) dodging fast moving and non stopping cycle rickshaws to visit India's largest mosque, the Jama Masjid, where we entered separately to avoid paying what we thought was a rather high camera and shoe charge and also where Idalis had to once again cover her head. A quick pass through the Tibetan craft bazaar and then a short car ride over to “Rajghat” where Ghandi's samadhi (memorial) is located and where his body was cremated one day after his assassination. His crematory memorial is emblazoned with his last words, “Hai Ram”, or “Oh, God”. A quick stop at a little restaurant outside of the park for a north Indian thali and our tour of Old Delhi was complete and then it was on to New Delhi where our first stop was “Humayun's Tomb”. Idalis and I both believe this mausoleum of the second Mughal emperor to be the highlight of our day. It is a large, impressive and elegant Persian structure, constructed of red sandstone inlaid with black and white marble. Overall, the site contains the tombs of several of the Emperor's family members, servants and even his barber, the only man permitted to approach the Emperor's head with a sharp razor. Each tomb is inscribed with Koranic versus. We were also lucky enough to witness craftsman tooling large marble columns by hand for the restoration work that was underway. A longer car ride to the outskirts of Delhi brought us to the recently constructed Bha'i Temple. An architectural masterpiece made to resemble a blossoming lotus and containing 27 petals surrounded by nine pools. While standing in the queue, you are advised that the temple invites and embraces members of all faiths and religions and you are requested to remain absolutely silent while inside the sanctuary, a silence that we found to be unique for India and overwhelming as it brought tears to Idalis' eyes. The temple was not actually part of the usual Delhi tour. However, having seen it from the plane, I kindly requested that our driver, Charlie, take us so that we could behold it's beauty from the ground as well. A truly magical and magnificent site with disciples and followers that strive for world peace, a unification of all mankind and an incredible membership comprised of world leaders and humanitarians alike. Our last and final stop was to be a combination of sites all within a stones throw of each other and including the impressive “India Gate” arch, the massive Presidential Palace, Rashtrapati Bhavan, the Parliament building, and the massive Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Military buildings that sit opposite of the grand thoroughfare that permits you up close access by automobile.

The other highlight of our trip to Delhi was a reunion with Nicolette (Nic), who we had first met in Olympos, Turkey and had spent some days together relaxing in the comfort of the Shaban Tree House complex while drinking Efes and eating pomegranate. While in Turkey, we had realized that we would all be in India at around the same time and had promised to do what we could to meet up wherever we may be. Well, our first gathering was in room 12A of our hotel where Nic was staying with her niece, Eva, who had joined her for a month of traveling around India and Nepal. Nic is one of the main reasons that our trip to India had been so successful as she had given us so much information about places to go and things to see from her previous experiences traveling here. We went out and had a great dinner catching up on each others experiences and getting to know Eva, who has invited us to stay with her in Australia. See you there. We also spent the next day together walking around town, doing a bit of shopping, getting Nic a new phone plan and, after two incredible thorough security searches, catching the movie “Slumdog Millionaire” at a local movie house, a major social institution for the Indian masses. At the end of our short time together, we said good bye to Eva who would be returning to Adelaide on the eighth of February and made more plans to meet Nic in the north where we hope to join each other in Dharamsala to see the Dalai Lama in his public speaking engagement on March 11th. We looked forward to seeing them both!

We had one last memorable experience while staying in New Delhi. While standing at an ATM waiting to pull out money, we met a really sweet, young French Canadian couple who had just recently arrived in India. Our introduction to Mark and Amelie was an inquiry from Mark as to where we were staying. This question turned into a conversation and an impromptu dinner at the Metropolis Hotel roof top restaurant where they informed us of their plans to travel around northern India and Nepal by bicycle, which they had brought with them, along with the necessary luggage and equipment. Having just arrived, they were full of questions, concerns and maybe even a small bit of anxiety. Idalis and I fully understanding this overwhelming feeling did our best to try and impart whatever knowledge we had acquired in our ten week course of “Intense India 101”. We had a really insightful and enjoyable conversation and said our goodbyes at the end of dinner wishing each other the best, and as they say in India, a “Happy Journey”. If you are interested, Mark and Amelie are also maintaining a blog of their travels and their attempt to see India from behind the handlebars of a bicycle, you can follow their adventures on their very own blog, www.leprojetjarret.wordpress.com. We know we will be checking in on them occasionally and wish them the very best. With that, our whirlwind tour of Delhi ended and our eighteen day car tour of Rajasthan with Charlie begins. Wish us luck as we head deep into the dessert, land of the camel.

Despite our ability to, dare I say, toughen up a bit, there is still always the persistence of abject poverty, especially in the major cities. It is a part of India that I doubt we will ever get “used to”. Children dodging chaotic traffic in the hopes of acquiring a few rupees or even an ink pen, entire families living under trees and in medians, victims of disease and possibly even disfiguring clambering for change just to survive. It is all a bit much to digest and even harder to begin to understand. Most say to just ignore it and certainly don't contribute to it as it tends to perpetuate the problem. However, conscience would remind you that these are humans just like you and they have every right to a free and happy life. Perhaps the most difficult and helpless feeling either of us has ever had is looking into the eyes of a small dirty, barefoot child, dressed in rags and knocking on the window of your car and knowing that no amount of rupees that you could ever oblige them with would make much of a difference in their lives or in their fragile futures. Being as there is not much that we can do to restore order to these longstanding conditions in our short stay here, we are both hopeful that the clearly evident progressive changes and modernization happening at break neck speed here in India somehow recognize the need to provide for and include even the weakest, smallest and most forgotten members of this community. On the upside, we have been fortunate enough to discover some of the better charitable organizations that are doing great work here in India in an effort to help address the problem of poverty. Should you wish to get involved, please do so by researching any of the links provided below.
http://www.operation-shanti.org/
http://www.kpjtrust.org/
http://www.salaambaalaktrust.com