Delhi Delights

                Having heard various horror stories about Delhi, including disparaging comments from a few Delhi-ites themselves, I didn’t have high hopes for my short stay in the city. Well, how wrong you can be, travellers of the world! I guess that for a lot of people, Delhi is the first place in India they see and if you’ve never seen that level of intensity of human life before, it could be a little intimidating. And admittedly, the slums are pretty horrific as you pull in on the train, but slums are on the horrific side the world over – they’re not exactly sought-after real estate. But the centre of New Delhi is not dissimilar to the centre of any other capital city, with a lovely shiny new metro system before which I imagine the congestion was fairly horrendous. (It’s also the only place in India where I’ve seen a queue of a standard that would be acceptable at home, at least until the train doors open and everyone surges forward, totally overwhelming the security guard responsible for queue maintenance.)

                I successfully managed to locate my parents (who arrived bearing a large and much appreciated bag of Mini Eggs) and, having swapped stories from the last five months, went off on a tour of the city lead by a couple of students. We scooted around the monuments of the British-built New City and the major temples, where Mum and Dad learned quite quickly that lace-up shoes are not the best footwear for a cultural tour of an India city, and dove (dived? Duv?) into the streets of Old Delhi. Whereas New Delhi is spacious, green and relatively clean (the pride of the British Raj, though they only got sixteen years to enjoy it before the Viceroy’s abode became the President’s), Old Delhi really is a rabbit warren of passageways that seem to get ever-narrower, Willy Wonka style, as they burrow into the heart of the city, but suddenly erupt into peaceful, brightly coloured courtyards of the wealthy merchants. Spices and deep fried foods clash with urine in your nostrils while the shops stock everything from sari-borders to taps. We ambled (or rather, were shunted by cycle rickshaws) along the wedding bazaar which, unsurprisingly, deals primarily in all things matrimonial and then peels off into Parantha Gulli, home of my favourite breakfast item. After a quick sqiuzz around one of the Gurdwaras, where we ‘helped’ by rolling a couple of chapattis in the communal kitchen and Dad sported a rather fetching glitzy bandana, we tucked into lunch at the famous Haldiram’s and headed off to try and find the Tibetan market (we didn’t really find it – I thought we had when we spotted a couple of Buddhist monks, but it turned out they were just making the most of a shoe sale. But then who wouldn’t?)

                During our exploits, I got absolutely no more unwanted male attention than anywhere else in the world (except for a prominent crotch pressed against my backside on the metro, though that could happen anywhere when it’s that crowded), but did get an invitation for dinner from a guy I’d been chatting too on the train, to be redeemed at any time, should I return to Delhi with more spare time on my hands. Mum even managed to get herself an escort across a busy road after having to get herself stranded on the far side, which we’re not sure if it signifies the next step in the evolution of her life or if he fancied taking her out for dinner too.