Delhi, India – September 10th – 12th, 2016

Before arriving in Delhi, we had a 3 hour layover in Moscow. Although exhausted, we managed to learn a few tidbits about Russians (who in our limited experience seem to be pretty nice): 1. They like their duty free stores (they were literally everywhere) 2. They have seriously uncomfortable benches which are literally impossible to sleep on 3. They enjoy partaking in PDA.

Enough about Russia though, we finally arrived in India after about 29 hours of travel. Although we were at the “best rated airport in the world” we could not figure out which immigration line we were supposed to stand in and ended up in the wrong line for 15 minutes before standing in the correct line behind 12 people for over an hour! They take all of your finger prints with a machine that does not appear to work very well. Perhaps our finger prints will tell them where we are in the city of 20 million + people? Lucky for us a driver was there waiting for us to take us to the hotel, unlucky for us we got a flat tire on the way and ended up stranded in the middle of the road like sitting ducks. At first we were convinced that we were being kidnapped since our driver literally just stopped in the road, got out, and started making a phone call without any explanation. Two things gave away that the worst was not happening: 1. We were stopped directly in front of the US embassy, 2. We really did have a flat tire (yes, we checked). Again lucky for us, another driver came to the rescue, unlucky for us he was an absolute maniac and took turns going at a speed just under that which would flip the van-car mobile. We did, however, make it to our hotel, which was in a crazy busy part of the city with narrow streets full of sleeping people and cows.

We slept in the next morning, partially because we were tired and partially because we were more than a little nervous to go outside. We finally ventured out and ended up hiring a taxi driver for the day to take us around to the Delhi sites. His name was Singh. He didn’t speak much English, but was nice enough and didn’t drive too scary, given Delhi’s driving standards (a couple quick notes about driving in Delhi: the horn is in constant use, driving less than an inch from each other is completely normal, and there are no lanes only space which your car is supposed to be occupying). With the help of Singh, we visited 6 ATM’s before we found one that worked to get some rupees. Getting money was an absolute necessity since while the locals pay 30 rp ($0.45 usd) each for entrance into the major Unesco world heritage sites, foreigners pay 500 rp ($7.50 usd)! We visited the outside of Red Fort (couldn’t get in because of ATM debacle), Raj Ghat (Gandhi’s cremation site), Humayun’s Tomb, Gandhi Smriti (Gandhi’s assassination site), the president’s estate, parliament buildings, and India gate. Our favorite was Gandhi Smriti, since we got to learn some of the history of his life and a bit of his legacy. Since we were told to bargain for literally everything, I tried bargaining for a 1L bottle of water. The shop owner told me it was 20 rp, not realizing that is only $0.30 usd, I tried to talk him down to 5 rp ($0.075) to which he informed us that it was a fixed price which was written on the bottle. So I said no I wouldn’t take it for less than 10 rp and left. Turns out, though, that he wasn’t lying, it really is a fixed price (we asked Singh later) and I tried to buy a 1L bottle of water for less than a dime! Later, we ate at a restaurant that Singh recommended which turned out to taste almost exactly like Taste of India in Seattle! Yum!

The not so busy section of the street our hotel was on. The typical crowd prevented us from taking a more accurate photo.

Humayun's Tomb.

Parliament building and the surrounding city.

On Delhi day 2 we ventured out to see a Sikh temple (Gurudwara Bangla Sahib) where we learned about the Sikh religion and had found ourselves having a free lunch on the floor with ~300 Sikhs. One of the pillars of the Sikh faith is to accept other cultures and religions. Accordingly, everyone inside the temple was very nice! We then ventured out to the market where we again failed at bargaining and bought an overpriced Punjab for our upcoming trip to Haridwar (I am required to wear the traditional Indian clothing while at the ashram). For dinner we ordered a dosai. At the time we had no idea what it was, but it turned out to be this delicious pancake/crepe filled with paneer and veggies (which we had eaten before at Linger in Denver!).

Taking a tuk tuk (rickshaw) ride.

Gurudwara Bangla Sahib.

Overall our trip to Delhi left us felling extremely overwhelmed. We were constantly bombarded with crowds, people approaching us trying to either sell us something, drive us somewhere, beg (mostly children), or ask us strangely personal questions (Where are you from? What do you do in your country? Where are you going? Etc. etc. etc.). It was difficult to know the difference between a nice curious person (which we did meet) and one that was trying to scam us (which we also did meet). We did learn some coping mechanisms though: denounce our citizenship and tell people we are from Canada and wear the traditional Indian clothing (just me, it didn’t matter what Andy wore). We also learned that every wall is a urinal (and smells like one) and saw a little girl taking a shit in the middle of a crowded intersection. She did not appear to be homeless, which left us wondering if that was normal. Another strange thing about Delhi: most signs are written in English, but most people speak Hindi and varied amounts of English (does this mean that the signs (notably the traffic signs) aren’t actually being read?).