India Trip – Day Five – Delhi

I woke up quite early today at about 06:45 after a very good nights sleep which was only broken by sounds of people being sick in neighbouring rooms.I go for breakfast at 07:15 and have a couple of rounds of toast and a cup of tea.

I go to put my bags in the communal Intrepid day room where all of us will be leaving then while we tour around Delhi after knocking on the door and telling reception two young Norwegian girls open the door, it looks like I have just woke them up, the front desk screwed up. I apologise to the girls who seemed really friendly and understanding.

In the end we use my room as the day room for all our cases.

We leave the hotel at 08:00 and catch a local bus to Jama Masjid, the bus is very busy with very little space to stand up in.

Jama Masjid is one of Asia’s largest mosques built by Emperor Shah Jahan in 1656. I had to pay 200 rupees to use my video camera inside but I am glad I did. The architecture was very big with large domes inside the main building.

I also paid to get up to the top of one of the towers and from there you had a 360 degree view of the area, it was a very narrow spiral staircase up the tower and a little tiring as well.

After we leave the mosque we walk through a number of narrow streets and stop to have a Chai tea.

From here we catch another bus to a Sikh temple where we have to wear a small orange turban and are briefed about Sikhism by one of the people who work there. The first room we go to has a lot of people preying and singing towards an alter underneath which the Guru who the temple is dedicated to was be-headed.

We then move over to the communal kitchen where the cooks prepare curries and chapattis for anyone that needs it and is served in a large eating area, we did not get to see this though as lunch was starting in another hour.

We got quite hands on here and got the chance to make some chapattis ourselves.

After there we went to the spice market and all the smells of the spices were very strong, and colours very vibrant.

We then caught an underground metro train to Connaught Place. The New Zealand family happily let me walk around with then which was very nice of them.

Our first stop was lunch, we went to a place called Piccadelhi were you needed to walk through doors shaped like traditional British phone boxes and it had a fake double decker bus in there. I had the chicken kebab which was ok but nothing special.

After this we walked around the area looking in various shops as the needed some warm clothes for the trip ahead. We also stocked up on some snacks for the train journey; I get some oranges, bananas, crisps, chocolates and biscuits.

We then get an auto rickshaw back to the hotel which was a bit of an experience, you just feel a bit vulnerable on these roads in a small open sided vehicle.

When we get back I go for a short walk around the surrounding area of the hotel in Karol Bagh, and wait around the hotel.

We go out for dinner at about 18:30 to a local vegetarian restaurant and I have a vegetable fried rice and Coke, but we share everything so I try a bit of everything. We stay for about an hour then go back to the hotel.

We depart at 21:30 to go to the train station by 22:00, we board our train and then are allocated our bed, I am sleeping in the bottom tier of three ad in a room of eight beds.

I have a snack and go to bed.