While it’s easy to write about places you really enjoyed, writing about places that you came away from feeling negative about is much harder. Delhi is one such place for me. And looking back, was it all negative and is this over-riding feeling fair to the place, or was a lot of it subjective and just down to bad experiences on the day or week you were there?
Delhi was our landing spot in India and the first place we saw when we arrived. It is a huge, populous and at the time often very poor city. It was also our first destination outside Europe. So culture shock hit hard, and it was only when we got out of Delhi into some of the smaller cities in north west India that we started to relax and enjoy ourselves in this very different country.
While there are many things to see in Delhi: temples, forts, tombs, spice markets, parks and gardens, looking back at my photos of India the only photo I have is of the Jama Masjid. Not a good sign for someone who usually takes many photos on a trip.
We went through Delhi several times: on landing in India, on return from Rajastan and heading to Kashmir, then on our return home. Did we like it more each time as we became more familiar with it? Well I’m not sure. We got used to India in general, but Delhi was next level.
We were warned about walking the streets, but after some time we headed out into the streets of Old Delhi and got the full experience of walking around, with the sensory overload this involves. Did we enjoy it? Well again, I’m not sure, but it was certainly an experience and crucial to our understanding of urban India. It would have been easy to just get ferried around in taxi’s and not really experience the streets.
We agreed that we prefered Old Delhi to New Delhi. Old Delhi seemed to have a lot more life. New Delhi in comparison at the time, seemed much more sterile.
After some time we started jumping into Tuk Tuk’s and cycle rickshaws, surely a better way to get around than walking with a large rucksack. There was no metro then.
We were greeted on all sides by people trying to sell us stuff, sign up to things or just give money to them begging, and in the sorry state some of them were in, it was difficult to say no.
We saw a couple of the main sights of the city but I’m not sure we really did those full justice. Delhi has changed hugely since we were there, so now there would be even more to see. With the Taj Mahal so close to Delhi in Agra, it was also easy to get sidetracked and head out to see this and not see as much of Delhi as it may deserve.
We were a little afraid of the food, we’d heard so many horror stories of people getting ill. Although I eat meat normally I stuck to vegetarian food to start with. Lentil soup (dahl) was a favourite. Later I would start eating street food, and then I did get ill.
Unlike today, the hotels and cars didn’t have aircon. It didn’t exist. There was no escape from the heat unless you parked yourself under a nice large fan.
Has Delhi calmed down since we visited it? Well again I’m not sure. It still has the heat and smog, and it still looks pretty intense on the videos I’ve watched recently, but I won’t know unless I decide to go back there.
My one photo from Delhi: Jama Masjid. Header image by Aquib Akhter: side street near Jama Masjid.