Delhi: 13-14 January

13/01:
We arived in Delhi around 12 o’ clock (noon).
A long row was waiting for the passport check but finally we got out. We took a prepaid taxi to the address we got from Kamal, our host in Delhi. Because of a marriage in his family his house was pretty crowded and so we stayed with a friend of Kamal: Kaushi. He is a loyer in Delhi and was very nice and friendly. Around 3 we arrived at his apartment in a richer neighborhood. We were quite tired because of the long trip but we filled our time well by going to the Lotus temple and resting a little bit. The lotus temple is made of white marble with 13 pools around it. All religions can come here to pray, meditate … as long as they do it quietly. The outside might be very nice, the inside on the other hand was not really special and quite crowded.
It was much colder then we thought it would be so we were quite cold. After putting on some more clothes, it was a little better.
In the evening our Kaushi arranged a meeting with some other Couchsurfing travelers: two French girls and a Mexican boy. They were traveling all over the world and it was nice meeting them and talking a little bit. We brought some Belgian Chocolates: the famous Guylian Sea fruit (zeevruchten) and everybody liked them very much.
At last we went to bed, tired as we were….

14/01:
We slept a little too long but I think we needed it.
We took an Auto - rickshaw to the city centre market: Connaught place. Traffic was really heavy and made us think of our stay in Mumbai.
We went to see the the Mosque but there a guy proposed to see old delhi with him as a guide. It was the the known story: you don’t have to pay me but if you are happy with my tour, you just give me something. We took our chance … Actually the tour was nice. We saw some of the houses in the maze of little streets in old Delhi. Some of them were really beautiful. He also wanted to show us some very nice (cheap?) shops were we bought some stuff. I’m sure that he got a commission on them, because he insisted on taking us there over any other place. It was a good feeling too that we were not the only ones that fell for it, we passed some other Belgians there too. They must have been as surprised as we when they heard some Flemish. Afterwards he took us to (in his words: a house bigger than the mosque) a big bazaar filled with wholesale of spices. That was rather a harsh attack on our lounges. Even the Indians around were coughing all the time. The best part must have been the top roof though. It gave a splendid view over Old Delhi. On this roof, we met the other Belgians again. So, these tours are probably pretty much the same. At this point, we had a first thought about what we would pay him. He started off the tour with pointing out we didn’t really have to pay him anything, we would soon find out that the reality was a bit different: He told us we should take care of the money matter first and added the fact he charged 650 rupees an hour. Obviously, we were disappointed to hear he charged so much. We were even more disappointed when he didn’t feel 1000 rupees were enough. So, if you ever take this kind of tour, make sure you agree on a price first, or be prepared to be heartless and don’t give in to the begging for more (We failed and gave him 300 more). After taking us back to the street, we took a regular rickshaw back to the mosque (this is a weird feeling… sitting in the back of somebody trying to move through the traffic with everybody looking at you… WHITE GUYS!). In the rickshaw, we catched up with the Belgians (yet again). So we jumped off, and joined them for just a little while more. Even though there were some people praying, you could still visit the mosque. It was pretty peaceful apart from the massive amounts of pigeons (duiven) and some children doing the take-my-picture-for-some-cash trick. Back at the main road, we found a little clothes-market. It was actually quiet, probably because it was not ran by Indians, but by Tibetans (that’s what we learned from the free Tibet posters hanging around). And they had some pretty nice stuff too. You can have a look around here without repeating “no thanks” every 20 seconds.
By now, we were starving, so we headed back to Connaught place to grab a bite. We did some window shopping here too: There are loads of western-like pricy shops here. I’m thinking adidas, nokia, levis, … After having some Chinese food, we headed to the lounge bar upstairs called Spirit. Here we met up with Kamal, who would have hosted us normally if he didn’t have family over to visit him. After another busy day, we returned to our host and hit the bed as soon as possible.

More will follow this evening. Now were going on a city tour through Jaiupur.

Byyyeee

greetings
Groetjes aan iedereen

Elise en Jan