Old Delhi

After spending two weeks in Kerala, a province that shares the southern tip of India with its neighbour Tamil Nadu, we returned to Delhi for the last leg of our trip which has taken us to Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh, home to the Tibetan government in exile and residence of the Dalai Lama. We figured that our day in Delhi would just be about organizing our journey, picking up our tickets and killing some time. Our train departed from the Old Delhi railway station and our travel agent arranged to get us driven there. On parting, he advised us to spend some time going through Old Delhi on a cycle rickshaw, since our train was a night one at 10pm.

Oh boy. Little did we know that the few hours we spent in Old Delhi with a Nepalese rickshaw driver guide would be one of the highlights of our journey, on par with our houseboat experience in Kerala (I think Adrian wrote something about that). Adrian and I gravitate to urban environments. We like people watching and the hustle and bustle of daily mundane life - you know, stuff like winding our way through narrow lanes filled to bursting with wedding saris and fabrics, dripping with jewelry and heady with incense fumes. Normal everyday stuff like breathing in the scent of a hundred spices in the wholesale spice lane that was so choked with airborne spices that even the merchants were coughing and sneezing right along with us. I cannot even describe how tight these Old Delhi lanes are and how much human and motorized traffic winds its way through them - in both directions! And how many shops, wide open to the lanes with merchants often sitting on floor mattresses. Tiny woodworking shops with old-skool tools and men wearing dhotis to cope with the heat. And amidst it all a tiny girl lovingly polishing a motorbike (we almost got her on camera... almost).

Sometimes when we couldn't proceed on the rickshaw, we had to disembark and follow our guide on foot. Our first such foray (mind the um... shit) led us to a lovely old lane with a hidden Jain temple at its end, where we had to be careful to remove all leather items and wash our hands AFTER removing our leather shoes (I learned this the hard way as I touched my shoe as I took it off and was asked to wash my hands again). Our second venture on foot was through the spice wholesalers stalls and up the stairs to a rooftop where a group of boys were on a break from working as fry cooks for candy factory workers. We looked over the choked chaotic streets of Old Delhi and took pictures with our new friends who wanted us to send them a copy of the photos ... but how?

We return to Delhi in 4 days and will explore more of Old Delhi hopefully getting the same guide, if we can find him. Words fail me and I am still trying to process all that I have seen in the space of a few hours. All India is teeming with life and Old Delhi epitomizes both the worst and best of this incredible country. I have read many accounts of Old Delhi and India in general invoking the misery and the squalor, but all I see is Life in all its facets, all its moods, a cacophony of sights, sounds and smells that reminds us of that which is most basic - the sharing of space with others who have equal claim on it. It is the full symphony of life, with its major and minor chords where sorrow breaks daily bread with joy.