New Delhi
Backpack grabbers, quick snap cash snatchers and backstabbers. We had a trouble (but not hassle) free stay, but this seemed to be the attitude of many New Delhi inhabitants! An intimidating place bursting at the seems with unorganised chaos and to say it was hectic would be the understatement of the year! Two hours to cover as many miles, men sleeping naked in the street, unbelievable amounts of litter, inhaling the dust and fumes, the general not a second to lose and I should've been there yesterday mentality and aggressiveness, along with all the trucks, bicycle rickshaws, tuk tuks,
cars, overloaded mopeds and buses this place was definitely an eye opener! I don't think it'd surprise us if a polar bear walked past us juggling monkeys! It took 36 hours to get to the capital of India, the one continuous train wasn't as agonisingly painstaking as it sounds, we were lucky enough to be next to a kind family (they kept offering us food, Kirsty was grateful of the homemade goodies), and it was only the daytime which dragged a little! As soon as we stepped of the train we could smell the poverty and strife in the air! There was a sheer mass of people in the streets even at the early hour of the day We knew our hotel was close to the station but navigating around New Delhi wasn't a task we wanted to undertake on empty stomachs, we were immediately bombarded by taxi, tuk tuk drivers and rickshaw riders, it's annoying when you're trying to get your bearings in a new place and twelve people are asking you the same thing (It's gets to the point of just ignoring people and pushing your way through, there's only a certain amount of patience and politeness a person can have.)! After walking/shuffling up the road a little bit we found a less animated tuk tuk driver, we were in our hotel within ten minutes but even that journey was action packed with cows and dogs crossing the road and traffic coming from all angles, it was plain to see how densely packed Delhi is!
The dusty and narrow alleyway where our hotel was located was a great disguise for the budget yet surprisingly modern and upmarket accommodation, with air conditioning and a T.V we felt spoilt! Pretty much the only reason we went to Delhi was so we could see the Taj Mahal and for its connections to Himachel Pradesh, however feeling better than we thought we would after the Mammoth train journey, we headed to one of Delhi's main attractions The Red Fort. Walking out the door of the marble floored hotel in the early afternoon was like stepping into Satan's cesspit, It was forty five degrees, the dust and pollution made the stale and humid air hazy, it took a few minutes to adjust!
I won't keep going on about the tinned sardine streets but you have to have eyes everywhere, literally any animal, vehicle or person (you witness so many arguments between people in the street, you see a lot of road rage and sometimes you look up after refusing a child begger and see some old weirdo shouting at you with a cotton bud in his hand!) can hit you at anytime, from any angle! Crossing the roads is also a madness beyond description!
We took the well organised, modern and not so busy metro to the Red Fort. After fighting through the crowds at the other end we broke through on to the grounds of the grand fortress! Built by the Mughals in 1639 and made of red sandstone the tall, thick walls were dwarfing however the entrance fee for foreigners (us) was expensive so a walk around the fort was all we did!
Taj Mahal
A man from China and a Columbian fellow also wanted to see the crown palace the same day so we agreed to taxi share and set off early at half past two in the morning with a full car (plus a bloke sleeping in the boot) to try and catch the sunrise, as it's around a four hour trip to the poverty stricken city of Agra where the Taj Mahal is! Is was pretty much one straight motorway road so it seemed to take forever to get there, Agra itself isn't much of a city (since the Taj Mahal became a world heritage site all factory production from the city was shut down, leaving the people poor!) It was around a ten minute walk before coming to the booths where you pay! Upon paying the expensive (for India) entry fee you get a bottle of water and some fancy shoe covers!
Despite the early hour it was still relatively busy and you could feel a sense of quiet excitement from everyone walking through the one of the three entrances (even the three gates were impressive intricate patterns on the huge dusty red archway). The sun was already making it a clammy affair (46 Degrees in fact).
Once we went into the the archway through the other side you could see a glimpse and the sparkle of the flawless, symmetrical pure white marble structure! The palace is a place where you just stand back in appreciation, it doesn't leave you speechless but it makes you say 'yeah this is an incredible piece of architecture!', and when you think, it was a combined effort of over two thousand labourers, a thousand elephants and twenty two years in the making way back in the 1600's it really is an amazing world wonder!
It was built in memory of a Persian Princess who was the wife of the Mughal emperor who passed away during her fourteenth childbirth! He also wanted to build the exact same Taj Mahal, but in black marble but was overruled simply because the construction of the original, completely bankrupted his people! Apart from the scaffolding on one of the pillars (slightly annoying!) we managed to get some amazing pictures, even with all the people walking in front of our cameras! Inside of the crown palace (with our fancy shoe covers on) wasn't much to look at in comparison to the outside however when you see the detail of the workmanship up close, you simply cannot imagine how hard they must've worked! We spent around two hours wondering around the gardens and taking it all in, but the heat of the day made us retreat back to where our taxi was!
It took longer getting back to Delhi due to traffic, but when we were back we decided after the really early start just to relax until the next day, where we jumped on a sleeper bus (after an interesting and bumpy, bicycle Rickshaw ride) to Manali where the winding roads and snow capped peaks of the Himalayas awaited us!
