The Golden Triangle

Well, it's almost been 5 weeks since the start of my trip to India, and I'm officially done with the first part. Jesse, Michael, Justin and I left Mumbai yesterday on a 7:15am flight, and we arrived in Delhi at around 9:30. Some of the girls in our program had told us that Delhi was an absolute nightmare, so none of us were very excited to arrive. Nonetheless, we had made the decision that we would make the most of our day there. When we arrived, we were met at the airport by a driver, and he took us to our hotel, the Metropolis Tourist Lodge in the area known as Paharganj. As it turns out, Paharganj is the "backpacker" neighborhood of Delhi, and it's kind of nasty. It kind of reminded us of Bombay. The streets are narrow, there are people (and random cows and goats) everywhere, it's dirty, and there's the all-too-familiar stench of shit in the streets. As it turned out, though, the hotel was nice enough, with relatively comfortable beds, luke-warm showers, and A/C. We dropped our bags, got kind of settled, and ventured out into the city.

Our first destination yesterday was Connaught Place, which is one of the focal points of New Delhi (Delhi is separated into two cities, New Delhi and Old Delhi, and they are very different places). The first thing that we noticed while walking around New Delhi was that it is much cleaner than Mumbai. Also, the streets are wider, the traffic isn't half as bad, and there aren't nearly as many people trying to sell you stuff or begging for spare change. That's not to say they're totally absent....quite the contrary. After being in Mumbai for a month, however, New Delhi seemed like a cake walk. We walked around and stopped in some really cool places, including a Tibetan market and a 4-story store that sells all kinds of cool crafts and furniture. Afterwards, we continued walking down the Janpath (a central road in New Delhi), and we came to a wide-open park, which was basically unbelievable. There were even trash cans, and the grass had been mowed. I didn't think they had wide open space, trash cans, or mowed grass in any Indian cities! Anyway, we basically wandered around there for a while, and we got followed around by some kids who wanted money. Ultimately we found the metro station, and we were again in for a huge surprise. The Delhi metro is, incredibly, probably the nicest metro I've ever been on. The trains were all new, everything was automated (except for the ticket-buying process), and it was really clean. We really couldn't believe how nice it was! We also observed some hilarious things, like Indian people who had never used escalators trying to figure out how to get on. There was a woman with her daughter, and they just stood there at the bottom of the escalator watching them go by. The woman finally stepped on, of course everything was fine, but the girl got scared, ran back, and ended up just taking the stairs. The moment, aside from being a bit comical, definitely highlighted just how deep the culture gap is between the eastern and western worlds.

We got off of the metro in Old Delhi, and when we emerged, it was like we had stepped into a different world. Old Delhi is just as frenetic and congested as Mumbai, and it actually has even more third-world Indian charm. Here's a sampling of things we saw there that we never saw in Mumbai....cycle rickshaws, people getting their beards shaved on the street, snake charmers. Very cool stuff. After waiting for about an hour to get my phone charged, we walked by the huge mosque in Delhi (the name escapes me right now), and we took a cycle rickshaw to the Red Fort, which was really cool. After that we had dinner in Connaught Place, and we got to bed for our early morning wake-up today.

When I saw early-morning, I mean it. The alarm went off at 4:45am today, and we quickly packed up and headed to the train station for our train to Agra. The train was actually really nice, and we were fed breakfast with tea, plus they gave us free bottles of water and newspapers. We all kind of dozed off, and the stop at Agra snuck up on us. We almost didn't make the stop, but we all got off safely. We were met by a car from our hotel, the Oberoi Amar Vilas. This hotel is RIDICULOUS. We had all decided that since we've been paying $10/night for hotels the whole trip, we'd spring for the five-star hotel in Agra. It's definitely worth it. Our room overlooks the Taj Mahal, and it's extremely comfortable. I can't wait to take a hot shower and sleep in a bed with a soft mattress and a full comforter! It's really going to be amazing. We're heading to the Taj Mahal this afternoon, and we're going to stay there for sunset. Then we'll have a nice dinner, a leisurely evening, massages in the morning, and then we're off to Jaipur! Come back for more pictures and updates. Peace!