I realize I owe everyone details about the swine flu situation/complete panic in Pune, but I wanted to post about my Delhi trip first! It was really great to be able to get out of Pune after finishing those two intense papers. Carolyn, Coleen, and Jessie also came to Delhi that weekend, but they spent most of the weekend traveling to, seeing, and returning from Agra and the Taj. I feel like a bunch of people are going to be angry at me for
not seeing the Taj Mahal while I was in India, but I felt like by staying in the city I also got to see some impressive sights and have fun with friends!
I arrived in Delhi on Friday night and met up with my friend Aman from my Comp Lit class at Princeton. We went out to dinner in Defense Colony with about 7 of his other friends, who were all very nice! We ordered South Indian seafood, which was awesome, and then got paan off the street. Indians have it after dinner as kind of a mouth freshener (it may contain tobacco?), but it was sweet and pretty good. Aman's friends were all impressed that I did not get sick. Afterwards, we went back to Aman's house and watched part of Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! before my
other Princeton friend Neha came over. After the first part of the movie (yea VCDs!), we had to go home because it was 2am! Neha and I still want to acquire the second half of that movie and finish it.
Oh yes. There are a lot of dogs all over India. In Pune, we have befriended the ones around our hostel. Even the ones that we don't pet, name and feed are pretty non-confronational-- they wait for cars to pass before crossing the road and usually waltz by without noticing you. NOT TRUE in Hauz Kaus! We were nearing our house in Aman's car and we stopped to check if our neighborhood gate was open, and these street dogs started forming a circle around the car. We didn't think anything of it until, all at once, they charged at us, barking and snapping! The windows were open, so I screamed! We drove off past them rather quickly, but it was completely bizarre! Why are there roaming gangs of attack dogs in Delhi?? It reminded me of my friend Kaitlin's story about monkey gangs in Africa, who apparently wait along roadsides with their spears...
Neha has several relatives in Delhi, and this weekend we stayed upstairs from her great-aunt and uncle (I believe) in Hauz Kaus. Their place was v. nice-- this was our living room! The beds were more than an inch thick, the air conditioning worked (v. important in Delhi, the climate is much like Virginia's in the summer), it was basically paradise.
We planned out an ambitious itinerary for Saturday afternoon sightseeing, made possible by the fact that Neha has a driver to take us wherever we want in the city. He's helped her practice her Hindi, and I was so impressed by how much she's improved in only three months! She could speak nearly fluently with Niraj, the driver, while I could only catch a couple words here and there (he also spoke really fast!). Slightly embarassing... but it's harder to get people to practice Hindi (esp in Pune) than you would think. I have such a low baseline that people often get frustrated within a couple minutes because I can only say so much! I'm hoping my friend Devaki will Skype me from her job in France to practice during the year...
Anyway, first stop on our trip was the Qutb Minar!
The stone slab blurb on the tower. Basically, it is a very old (12th century) minar built by a Mughal king as part of a larger mosque/tomb/madrasa complex. But reading about it is only so impressive...
You really have to see it to believe it! The structure is as tall as a skyscraper-- much taller than you'd expect from something built so long ago. You have to crane your head to see the top... try to compare the size of the people in the picture and you start to get an idea.
But even cooler than the size of the minar was the detailed artwork on the side, all the way up. Each little tier has intricate carved designs, and below they have carved designs and arabic writing. It's so beautiful. The shape of the minar is also beautiful-- note the alternating round and square portions. I have lots of pictures of the minar up close and from far away because I thought it was so cool... but too many to post here!
Like I said, the minar is the focal point of a larger complex, but this part is not as complete as the minar itself.
The most complete part is the Alai-Darwaza and accompanying mosque structure. The decoration here is also remarkably detailed and certainly beautiful-- almost no surface is completely smooth and without design. It's hard to imagine that these buildings are over 800 years old.
You can see what I mean about detailing when you look at the walls-- fish/ivy everywhere! Neha had been to Qutb Minar before and has learned about Islamic architecture at Princeton, so she was able to explain a lot of significant things about the architecture to me. For example, it's notable that there are so many lotuses among the decorations at Qutb Minar. In Islam, the lotus has no religious significance, but it is a very important symbol for Hindus. The kings who comissioned the buildings were Muslim, but the workers themselves were Hindu. Because they were familiar with carving decorative lotus flowers, they appear everywhere... kind of suggesting that the two religions can coexist. In fact, if you could get an aerial view of the minar itself, you would see that the top is decorated with a giant lotus.
Another cool fact to know is that the minar and other buildings are constructed from "recycled" temple parts-- the stone from the Hindu temples the Muslim rulers destroyed became part of the new mosques they built. You can see this reflected in the various colors that make up the arches and columns. Personally, I think that the changing colors make the buildings even more like artwork, like a standing mosaic.
You can also see remnants of the old temples in the individual stones that now make up the Islamic structures. Some of them still have images of Hindu gods, like Lord Ganesh, still visible on the blocks. These images were covered by plaster when the mosque was in use, but since then the plaster has worn away and you can see the original carvings.
AND then we got bored of taking formal pictures, so we played in the columns!!
After Qutb Minar, we went into the central district, Connaught Place, to see the government buildings. Here's we're standing in front of the Rashtrputi Bhavan... the President's House. :)
Better picture through the fence.
There are other government offices, like the Defense building, surrouding the President's house that have similar architecture-- all very beautiful. Can you imagine working in a place like that? Actually, since it was a Saturday, this area wasn't crowded at all. The sidewalks were wide and clear, everything was relatively clean and green. It's clear where the upkeep crews spend most of their time...
Aha. Neha told me to take a picture of this and label it as viciously ironic.
Indian flag on top of the nearby Parliament House.
The Parliament House, which is round in shape. There is a lawn, fountain, and traffic barrier in front, so we couldn't see much more than this. The lawn actually continues all the way along the sides of the main street these buildings are on, kind of Washington DC mall-style. On one end, you can see the silhouette of the President's House, and if you turn in the other direction you can see that the lawn and road lead straight to Delhi's Gateway of India structure (that looks just like the one in Mumbai). Very nicely laid out. Neha was quick to point out the complications though-- the people relaxing on the lawns were very poor, but they were lucky because most poor people in the city can't even get to this place at all. A lot of money goes into making this part of the city attractive and orderly (traffic stayed in LANES!), but more could be spent on even marginally improving conditions in the general city and the slums. Interesting to think about...
After Connaught Place, we visited a marketplace called Dilli Haat. It was a more formalized place than the Tulsibaag bazaar in Pune (there were wall and an entry fee) and it sold wildly different stuff. Pune mostly sells jewelry and clothes, but here there were beautiful wooden handicrafts like trays, statues, pottery, and other home decorations. I told Neha I could probably make a Martha Stuart house using only decor from this marketplace... and that I would but these stalls on my wedding registry. It was a funny thought-- I can imagine the shopkeepers nearly dying of anticipation as my entirely foreign wedding party waltzed in to buy presents!
More pottery-- in my opinion these designs seemed like hybrid India and Africa. :P
And the result of KC being in a place with cool trinkets for good prices... so much shopping. But they were mostly gifts, I swear!
We went back to East of Kailash, the house where Neha stayed for most of the time during her summer internship. East of Kailash is considered a pretty good neighborhood, but her driver lives right across the street in a slum area. He called us out to show us when the government water tanker came to deliver water to the neighborhood, which happens once each day. It was quite a bit of commotion. About a hundred people flowed out from the slum to fill their buckets from the tanker's hoses. Always eye-opening to see how close poverty resides to the privledged lifestyle in India.
We went out Saturday night to meet
other Neha in Vasant Vihar and on the way we got to see Delhi's preparations for the celebration of Janmashtami, Krishna's birthday, on August 14th. These lighted gates were put up over the main highways, and they're really cool to see at night!
Woohoo! We met Neha at a lounge called RPM and had fun hanging out in the air-condioning with the music.
We bar-hopped to a couple of other places too, including this one called Turquoise Cottage. They played lots of retro US music, including my all-time favorite, We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel. I'm proud of my nerd taste in music. :) And, for those observant people, yes I am wearing the same shirt Neha was wearing during the day. It's actually mine, and I let her borrow it for the day so she didn't have to wear her leopard print tank top while we were sightseeing!
Getting home after this was the real adventure... and probably one of the most scary experiences I've ever had. I'll suffice to say that we had to stand around with a bunch of sketchy men late at night until we finally got a ride, and then had a real panic once we reached the neighborhood because we realized a car with two men inside was following us. Neha saw the parked car waiting for us with the lights off, so we were able to quickly jump back in our car before they got out. They drove alongside us and started talking to the driver and asking us to come with them, so we shut the window and asked the driver to step on it. There was about a 30 min. chase where we spun around corners trying to lose these guys, ducked under the seats so they couldn't see us, Neha and Neha shouted in Hindi at the driver (who was also rather freaked out), and we finally were able to hide in a gated community until they were gone. Neha (Kumar) told Neha (Goel) and I later that she was really glad we hadn't gotten shot, which is what happened to a different girl she knew. AHH!
Okay, so we DID live to see another day and learned the valuable lesson of never staying out in Delhi past about 11pm, or probably 8pm to be safe. >.< The next morning we got up to go see my last sight of the trip, since my flight was at 4:15pm.
This was Akshardham, a temple built by a specific sect of Hindus that build similar temples all around the world (including Toronto??). The building is stunning to see from afar, and once again the detailing was incredible to see up close. The temple itself was closed for maintenance, but we were able to walk around the area and see the greenery and carvings. There's a walkway along the base of the temple with 3 foot fall elephants carved into the walls-- scenes of elephants playing, interacting with humans, worshipping gods, etc. Everything looked so realistic! One elephant was carved to be wearing a cloth drape, which actually appeared to have waves and texture. There were also depictions of people pouring water or elephants wading in water that looked strikingly lifelike. To believe that the temple only paid for materials-- all the artwork and construction was done for free!
The downside about Akshardham was that, to prevent terrorist attacks, we had to be strip-searched before going in. This meant no purses, cameras, cell phones, backpacks, water bottles or tridents (as depicted on the sign outside) allowed in. They even opened Neha's mascara and change purse to check it! The only other picture we were able to get was this corny one out in the parking lot... Namaste!
Though some parts of Delhi didn't impress me (the weather, sketchy men, attack dogs), I was very happy to see some cool historical sights. We didn't even get to go to the more famous places like the Red Fort (closed) and the Bahai Lotus Temple (also closed), and I still was impressed with the cool architecture and stories behind the buildings. It would have been difficult to live there, I think, but I feel good that I at least got to visit. I mean, it is a capital city, and I am a WWS tool. :)
Only a week left in India, but I'm not ready to leave! Maybe if I get swine flu, I won't have to... just kidding Mom, really!
Sari-licious! :)
