New Delhi, IN

Our train ride to New Delhi was probably exactly as good as it could have been. The privacy of our berth meant that we could make ourselves as comfortable as possible – which was pretty comfortable.

We had nice pillows and bedding, a hot meal, and more room than we needed. In such luxury we had a great trip, though most of it was spent sleeping. We arrived about an hour later than expected at the H. Nizamuddin station in Delhi, after the train spent the last couple of kilometers at a crawl, and met up with Auntie Pam, Niteesha’s mom, who was waiting for us at the station. She made us comfortable right away, and wasted no time in setting up a routine of hospitality which would characterize our stay in the Delhi area. We “checked in” to Chez Edwards, unpacked and freshened up, then were whisked off to see some of the sights of Delhi.

Our first stop was at the Qutub Minar, an ancient monument surrounded by other smaller buildings and ruins all of which makes up the Qutub Complex. We spent some time exploring the buildings and ruins here, and marvelling at the intricacy and detail of the finishing on the arches and pillars.

Next we visited a market where Auntie Pam showed us how to do business with the vendors there. I almost felt bad for them, the way she was took charge, but that’s the way you’ve got to do it. Christina enjoyed the shopping and haggling experience, and once I ran out of money we returned home to rest. Both Christina and I felt like we were getting the five-star treatment, with a driver to drop off and collect us all over town, an expert guide showing us the sights, air-conditioning, and a carnivorous diet. Our stay in Udaipur had acclimated us to searing heat, vegetables, and at least a small degree of self-reliance, so this change was almost overwhelmingly comfortable. We had a fabulous sleep and woke to a new day of sightseeing.

This time we went to the Lotus Temple, a Ba’hai installation that seems targeted more toward marketing their faith rather than serving its followers, but it was a very beautiful building and definitely worth seeing. They have you remove your shoes when approaching the temple, so it’s a quick-step up the hot stairs until you find a shady patch of stone.

Once we had taken that in we moved on to see some of the governmental structures, which included the India Gate, the Parliment buildings and President’s Residence. They were all quite impressive – much more so than what I’ve seen of the Canadian Parliment buildings (though it was being renovated when I was in Ottawa, so it might be prettier now).

It was great having Auntie and her driver to show us around like this. I don’t know how we would have seen these sights without him dropping us off, circling the block, then picking us up again. I suppose we could have done it by rickshaw, but that would have taken forever, and been miserably hot. After sight-seeing we went to the Janapath area, where there are more markets and shopping, and where I was, again, cleaned out. In the evening we visited Niteesha’s brother Nick and his wife Sanam at their condo – and brought all of our stuff with us. In fact, we moved right in with them for the next span of days, since the room we had occupied was slated for Uncle Deepak’s sister Neela and her husband Bobby, scheduled to arrive from America.

This condo is quite different from those we are used to in Calgary. It has three spacious bedrooms, each with bathroom, a “servants quarters” with its own separate entry, and a problem with monkey invasions. Sanam has had to chase monkeys out a couple of times, despite being on the 9th floor, when a window or patio door has been left open. We didn’t have any visitors during our stay with them, but on that first day could see the monkeys hanging out in the parking lot and in the adjascent green space.

In the evening we all went out for a drink at a cricket-themed pub, where micro-brewing is becoming a popular trend. The beers were far superior to my previous, sparse, experiments with the more widely available Kingfisher and Haywards 5000. We had a grand time visiting well into the night. While visiting, Uncle Deepak and Nick both shed some light on how Cricket is played, clearing up some long-standing questions Christina and I had from our untutored observations of play in Riley Park at home.

The next day was Sunday, so Christina and I joined the Edwards family (including Uncle Bobby and Aunt Neela, who had arrived in the night) at church. This is our first time attending church since leaving, and it had a pleasant symmetry, since the message on the life of David mirrored that which we had last heard at home. The rest of the day was spent eating and relaxing. In the evening we went with Nick and Sanam to a movie, which was a much better experience than you would get in Canada. Seating is assigned when you purchase the ticket, so there’s no rush for a “good seat” (though, I suppose that same rush is simply deferred to the time of ticket purchase instead of entry). In addition to being reserved, the seats are much more comfortable, with deep reclining capabilities and superior leg room. I thought the cherry on top was the intermission, which is taken during each movie and allows viewers to get up and stretch or get snacks. This is good, but even better was near the end of the intermission when a steward came around taking orders for refreshments, in case we didn’t want to get up. Now that’s class. Apparently this isn’t even one of the better theaters.

Christina and I were invited to tag along on Tuesday’s trip to Agra, to see the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort, so Monday was designated as a rest day in preparation. We took the morning very easy, and I had another introduction to a novel Indian convenience. Sanam claimed to be baking cookies, but wasn’t doing any baking, so I asked what was up, and she said she was “waiting for the eggs”. I was confused, so she explained that she had called the grocer and they would be running some eggs over as soon as possible. That’s fantastic! In the afternoon we watched an Indian movie with everyone (except Uncle Deepak, who was working), which was about the cultural differences between Britain and India, and had all sorts of inside jokes about pronounciation. Back at their place we enjoyed large glasses of sangria, made earlier that morning by Sanam, which featured an Indian red wine and domestically grown apples and peaches (neither of which I knew were grown in India).

Our trip to Agra required a very early start, so Christina and I were picked up shortly after 5:00AM and spent a bleary first hour on the road until pulling into a restaurant for breakfast. Auntie Pam was in charge of ordering, and called up an onion Parantha for Christina and a Dosa for me. The Dosa was huge! – it looked as though my meal was a baseball bat or something, spilling comically over the sides of the plate. I later was informed that it was a “family Dosa”, so I didn’t feel quite so bad about not finishing every crumb. After a bite to eat and slurp of tea I felt much better, and was alive enough for the remainder of the drive to observe the towns and farms we passed, and to watch the craziness that is Indian highway traffic. Christina still snoozed, but didn’t have an easy time of it, due to the sudden turns and braking and alarming honks that are the norm for roads here.

Our first stop in Agra was Akbar’s Tomb, where we got out only long enough for a few exterior photographs of the building and grounds. It was very nice, but just an appetizer. The brief remainder of the drive was in Agra proper, which I had envisioned as a cluster of tourist buildings around the Taj Mahal itself, but the reality is that Agra is a large city, and you can’t even see the Taj until you’re almost on top of it (or, as we would discover, if you are elevated above the mass of the city buildings). Traffic on the highway was aggressive, but in town that same aggression amplified by congestion was much worse. We were deposited at the parking lot and picked up by a rickshaw for the short ride to the Taj gates.

Auntie Pam was determined to sneak Christina in disguised as a local, so the Kurta purchased in Udaipur as well as a scarf from home were to be the costume. They seemed to have no trouble at all, and due to the much shorter line for women than men were through much sooner than Uncle Bobby and myself. We were picked up by our guide, who earned his rupees right away by bullying our way to the front of the line, against the protests of numerous fellows who had waited for what must have been a long time in the sun. He was waving my “tourist class” ticket (which is several orders of magnitude more expensive than the “local class” ticket) and shouting about my being a VIP and that all the guys in this line were in the wrong line because it’s for VIPs only. I was pretty sure he was going to get beat up, but it worked well enough to hussle us through. Once inside we met up with the ladies and began the tour.

I would have to say that the Taj Mahal is every bit as impressive in person as it seems on TV. Even knowing what it looked like and something about what to expect it was still impressively big, impressively white and clean, and incredibly ornate and intricate in the details of its decoration and architecture. For me, one of the neatest things was inside the Taj, when the guide brought out a small flashlight and held it against the colored stones set in marble. These stones captured the light and shone very colorfully, which was a neat effect.

Our next stop was Agra Fort, which is every bit as rich in history as Taj Mahal, and may not be quite as ornate or finely detailed, but more than makes up for this in sheer size.

Our tour here was at least as long as the one we had already completed, and while still very interesting it did become difficult to enjoy through the heat of the day (which the guide estimated at 48 degrees, but that’s probably at least a few too high). The long drive home was even more interesting than the drive in, and the crazy roads made themselves felt even more strongly. Christina still managed to sleep through most of it though. The girl’s got a gift. During the drive Auntie Pam called Nick and had him pick up a pile of samosas and meet us at home, so when we arrived there was a hot snack waiting. We had dinner together, then Nick and Sanam took us back home and we slept very soundly.

We spent the next morning planning and booking for the next leg of our journey. We had solicited advice from every quarter, and ultimately decided to avoid the south of India to avoid as much monsoon as possible. I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit of the monsoon, but apparently while it’s monsooning everything shuts down, so it wouldn’t be the most interesting time to go. Instead we will do what the Indians do, and move north. I booked tickets for the bus to take us to Manali, which is something of a gateway to the Himalayan mountains, and the Jammu-Kashmere state. Auntie Pam had tried at length to secure some tour bookings through an agent known to her, but it ended up being a little more ambitious and expensive than what we were after. Especially following such a busy time in Delhi we were interested in exploring at our own pace. That is to say, slowly. Also, in the interest of future preparation, I booked another train ride from New Delhi to Haridwar, from which we could easily move to Rishikesh (made famous by The Beatles), which touts itself as the Yoga capital of the world. Christina had said that it would be a shame to visit India and not try out some Yoga, but we’ll see if that ambition still runs strong once we return from the north. For lunch we joined the family as they ate at Karim’s, a restaurant featuring the Moghul cuisine of Uncle Deepak’s heritage. All of the food was tasty, even the goat-brain curry which both Christina and I tried, but the Bara Kabab with a dash of lime sprinkled on top was my favorite.

Christina and I had one last sight to see in Delhi. The Red Fort. To do this we were dropped off at the public train station, where we boarded and rode for over an hour into downtown New Delhi. We disembarked at the Chadni Chowk station and hired a cycle-rickshaw to cover the few blocks separating us from the fort. Once there we looked for the ticket booth, and Christina saw a huge mass of people gathered in the lot outside the gate. She thought it was a huge queue to get in, but when we closed the gap we saw that the mass of people was collected around a smaller group. This smaller group stood at the focus of a video camera team, and was made up of ladies dancing in tight clothes. We couldn’t be sure if it was a music video shoot of movie shoot, but it was neat to see either way.

Even with the dancing girls show, the Red Fort wasn’t quite as dazzling as Taj Mahal, and the tour was much shorter as well. The museum, included in our tickets, was worth seeing, and I especially enjoyed the ancient calligraphy pages and hand drawn city plan from hundreds of years ago.

On our way out there were a bunch of chipmunks in a park area, and two of them were fighting with entertaining ferocity. We had to take a picture. After seeing the fort we walked back to the station through the bustling street market and got on the train for the homeward bound journey. In this direction the train was much busier, and we took Nick and Sanams advice and split up; Christina got on the Ladies car and I got on the common car. Though they are different cars the separation is subtle, since they are joined, like the long buses in Calgary. I think that the car next the the ladies car must be the most popular one on the train, because it was packed. We stood within eye-shot of each other, but the contrast between my sweaty and densely cramped car, and her comparatively airy environment was stark. Sanam picked us up from the station when we arrived, then took us to her parents home where we were to have dinner.

We had  a great time meeting her parents and hearing all about her past, which includes an award-winning equestrian career, modelling, painting, and music.  Her father was a fighter pilot in the Indian air force, and had all kinds of stories, as well as all kinds of drinks, both of which he shared liberally. The Edwards family soon arrived and we enjoyed another sumptuous dinner, and were entertained by both sets of parents swapping stories.

Our last full day in Delhi was spent mostly in waiting for our time of departure. We joined the Edwards’ for a last lunch, then they drove us to the “bus stop”, which was just a busy street corner. Without Auntie Pam there sorting out where to go and which bus to get on I’m not sure how we would have figured it out. There was no order or structure whatsoever. At last we were on our bus and underway to Manali. It wasn’t as comfortable as the train, but there’s a comfort in being on the move, and we had that at last.