Being in Delhi for 1-day was enough to make me miss Pune. The streets of Delhi are more crowded than anything I’ve seen yet in India and we didn’t trust anyone…anywhere. My office found a four star hotel that was adequately priced and very conveniently located.
Upon checking in, however, we felt like we were in a hospital that the world forgot in the ‘70s. The walls were stark and smelled like bleach, the room huge but bare, the bathroom moldy with grey towels, and the beds like sleeping on bricks. We had asked for a double bed but when we got to the room found two cot sized beds on either side of the room – each with its own brick mattress and wooden pillow. I felt like we were living the pious life.
Our driver told us not to trust anyone in the city…the problem…we didn’t really trust him. After our Taj adventure, we arranged for a noon pickup to get a tour of Delhi. First a mosque, then the red fort (which our driver said was closed, but oddly we saw tourists exploring the interiors), then a local shop that he said all his friends shopped at to support Taliban refugees…safe, huh? When we arrived at the shop it was an ornate building with about 5 tourist vans parked out front. Walking in the only people in the shop besides those who worked there were white. Against my better judgment I quickly proceeded to fall into the tourist trap paying too much for shawls – hey, what can you do? Gotta support the refugees, right?
After our whirlwind adventure around Delhi we made it to the airport to sit and wait for our 1hour delayed flight. We made the best of it exploring the coffee shop (which proudly served white bread and ketchup) and then the book store (which was lined with Kama Sutra books of all variations). Arriving back in Pune at 1:30am we breathed a sigh of relief. The honking was still bleeping but not nearly as amplified as in Delhi.
The streets still bustling a bit, and every corner decorated by men relieving themselves. But we were home…
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