Tag: New Delhi

I’ve come down with another cold, which sucks. Yesterday I started sneezing and had a headache. I was hoping it was just a reaction to the pollution, but unfortunately it has developed into a full blown sinus cold. Ugh. Second one on this trip.

Anyway, Yanmei wanted to go shopping and we heard about Dilli Haat which is an open air market. We took the metro to get there, and it was 100 rupees entrance fee (for foreigners). They should probably let foreigners in for free since I suspect we end up overpaying for everything we buy. Actually they should let everyone in free, because the place was a ghost town.

Maybe the problem was that even though they had 100s of shops there was very little variety. There were ten different shops, repeated a dozen times right down to having the same signs, same patterns on materials, etc. The shops were: dresses, scarves, rugs, shoes, fabrics, jewelry, art (same “hand painted” pictures in each one), brass statues, purses, and wood boxes and bowls.

Caught the guy modeling a dress for Yanmei, hehehe. They were pretty desperate to make sales, offering “first customer of the day” discounts. Overall it was disappointing, I’m sure there are lots of better places to shop in Delhi, I’m not sure why it has a good rating on TripAdvisor.

After Dilli Haat we went to Qutub Minar. This is one of the most famous sites in Delhi. If you’ve heard of the Iron pillar of Delhi that doesn’t rust, that is at Qutub Minar. The main attraction it the Qutub Minar itself which is a victory tower built in the 12th century.

The site happens to be on the approach to the airport, so there are a lot of planes flying over.

The Iron pillar was thought to be miraculous for many years because it is wrought iron, yet doesn’t rust or corrode even though it has been exposed to the elements for centuries. It is now understood how it works, an explanation is in the link above. It is estimated to be over 1600 years old so it significantly predates Qutub Minar and was moved there at some point.

Qutub Minar was definitely worth visiting.

After that we headed back to our hotel.

David

We had a little errand to run and wanted to take it a bit easy after the long Taj Mahal day. We walked to Khan market, which was like a strip mall but had some interesting shops.

After that we walked through Lodhi Garden, which is a free park in the middle Delhi that is full of 500+ year old ruins and tombs. It would be like if Golden Gate Park in SF was full of ruins, very cool. It was quiet and not busy at all, which was surprising given how nice a park it is. I also think it is a romance park, there were a lot of young couples sitting close together on benches talking quietly.

We’ve traveled so much that I think we’re getting jaded to sites. It is difficult to get interested about another museum or temple or palace. I found this park really interesting though, it’s something unique in my experience.

After that we went to Khanna market where we had a late lunch.

Then we headed back to the hotel.

David

For our first day in India we decided to book our trip to the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal is in Agra which is about 110 miles from New Delhi, which is a pretty reasonable train ride. Of course you can get all inclusive tours where they will drive you to the train station, give you tickets, pick you up, etc. but we wanted to book it ourselves. I think tours can be good in some situations, but booking it yourself gives you a better feel for local life.

Of course I wasn’t able to resister on the India rail website to buy tickets online, that would be too easy. So we had to go buy the tickets in person. The best (only?) place for foreigner to buy tickets is the International Tourist Bureau in Delhi station. We could get there by the Delhi Metro.

Not bad at all, pretty modern, similar to Beijing.

Once when we got out of the Metro we were right at the rail station. It was very crowded and tons of people were offering us taxis and tuk-tuks. It can be hard to keep your cool when you are trying to find your way in a confusing and you are constantly being badgered for taxis. The problem was we needed to get to the other side of the station across the tracks, but we couldn’t access any of the walking bridges over the tracks without tickets. Finally we figured out we could buy a platform ticket for 10 rupees to get across. That turned out to be a waste because no one ever checked it, despite having to pass through security and armed guards.

I’d read about a lot of scams targeting tourists. People will tell you the office is closed or moved and lead you to another place where they sell you overpriced or fake tickets. This was reinforced when we saw this sign:

This is my number one problem with India, you feel like you can’t trust anyone and everyone is trying to trick or scam you. I’m sure there are many honest, good people, but the problem is you don’t know so you can’t trust anyone. In most other countries if someone is friendly we are happy and grateful. Here we eye them with distrust and suspicion. It is a bad feeling.

Anyway we got to the International Tourist Bureau, got a ticket number and waited about two hours and finally booked our tickets to Agra for tomorrow. The reason you have to go to the ITB is they have some seats held for tourists even if the seats for locals are sold out. But it is like a bad DMV, long queues and slow service, but at least they had seats and some level of AC.

Then we headed back out and decided to walk to Old Delhi, which wasn’t too far from the station.

Eventually we headed to the Red Fort.

We paid 500 rupees each for a ticket to go inside.

Through the security check. Then we go to this:

We paid money to visit some shops? But no, once we got through the bazaar, we got to the interior.

By then we were tired and it was getting late so we decided to head home. Again we ran the gauntlet of taxi and tuk-tuk touts and walked towards the metro station. We to a further station because it was on a direct line to our hotel. Along the way we came across a restaurant that said 100% Vegetarian and was pretty full of locals so we decided to stop for dinner.

We’re not sure what that was but we saw most people around us ordering it so we got one too. It was pretty good. Afterward we continued to the metro.

Inside the metro they had an Air Quality Index display.

188 is “moderate” on this scale. Here is the US EPA scale:

The only other thing that happened on the way back is we got on the women’s car of the subway. We were rushing to get on a train already at the platform and quickly jumped on an uncrowded car. I immediately looked around and told Yanmei that I shouldn’t be here, although I couldn’t see any signs. Everyone was female and it was less crowded than a normal car. I moved to the next car while Yanmei enjoyed the female car 😀. When we got off I looked for a sign on the outside and couldn’t see one either. There must be an icon or color code or something else I’m missing.

David