Hello again from India, the country of contradictions! Last time, I shared some of my first impressions about this fascinating and chaotic country with you and I could add hundreds of new impressions by now, but first I wanted to share some of the things we saw at Delhi with you. And actually, the city with its old and new parts is a wonderful example for the contradictions of the country! But first, some history for all of those who like Gandhi's philosophy: the picture here shows the monument built in his honor and it is situated right where he was cremated after his assassination. It felt strange to be there and, at the same time, experience what is India today.
So, let's start our tour through India's capital with Old Delhi as we both did. Old Delhi is basically identical to what I described in the last post about the region where we stayed. It's chaos pure, thousands and thousands of people, very tiny streets, hundreds of shops all selling "very good thing" with "very special price",
lots of starring men, numerous wooden carts, cows, oxen, and huge markets for spices, clothing,... We made the mistake to go there on foot and I guess this is something tourists in India don't normally do. They take a rickshaw to the many attractions and thus cannot be bothered by the thousands of people. We, however, good
stuck somewhere in the middle of this chaos, in tiny streets where they don't seem to see a lot of white people and sometime even I felt rather awkward and not welcome. Poor David didn't like the place at all and we finally even took refuge in, ..., well yes, I have to admit it, Mc Donald's! But, strengthened by ice cream and some calm, we soon ventured out again and visited the Red Ford, a very beautiful defense system in the old city with lots of arches, temples, and gardens inside the impressive, massive, and red walls.
After a nice stop in the shadow of the trees and about 20 pictures of me taken by very strange guys, we went on to visit Jama Masjid, India's biggest mosque. Again, it was situated in the middle of chaos and it was hard work getting there but the effort was truly worth while. The building is stunning and the courtyard that has room for 20,000 praying persons makes you feel very small. I don't remember how I felt visiting mosques in Morocco in 2003 but this time I definitely had a queasy feeling near my stomach, asking myself what might be sounding from the huge speakers everywhere at
prayer time. Maybe it's the influence of the negative media cover on Islam on us that I didn't feel too good at a simple place of worship and peace but somehow I couldn't get over the idea that the words spoken in this place might not always be friendly towards us.... It's sad because I am pretty sure it's just a stupid feeling, but when we were visiting the Gandhi memorial afterwards I was still wondering what he'd say to the situation in the world today....
Enough of those gloomy feelings, I'd say but our next day brought some more strange thoughts for me. When visiting New Delhi, we started out with a temple built by one of India's superrich, Lakshmi-Narayan temple. It was a beautiful place, except for the hundreds of Swastikas everywhere on the walls and in pictures. The guide told us that it is one of the basic symbols of their religion here and that it stands for perfection, success, and accomplishment, but seriously, it gave me the creeps! So strange to see this symbol everywhere. (By-the-way, you can buy Hitler's Mein Kampf on every street corner here and one Indian guy told us already that his two greatest idols are Napoleon and Hitler - seriously, the creeps!!!).
New Delhi itself is very, very different from its old sister. It's much more what we'd expect of a nation's capital - developed, clean, bright, representative, and a lot less stressful to visit! :) For me personally, with my love for history, I
found the remains of the British Raj particularly impressive. The main boulevard between the India Gate and the palace of the vice roy is just enormous, you can almost feel the military parades going on, the buildings of the secretaries, the parliament, and the palace itself are not beautiful but very huge and impressive, and everything together towers on a little hill over the city.
However, New Delhi has more to show than just its historical past. The new part of the city is rather modern, even though skyscrapers and super-modern movie theater or shopping complexes like in Bangkok are missing and I found it surprisingly green, something which in turn is missing in Bangkok! :) We spent some time in the shades of the gardens and strolled around the many shops in Connaught Place, enjoying international newspapers and the fact that you usually only had to tell people once and not ten times that you didn't want to buy anything.
After some trouble with rickshaw drivers, who first took us to a place where we didn't want to go, then offered to take us where we wanted to go for the triple of the actual price, and finally offered to take us to some shopping places instead (you really need to be patient in the country, this is good practice for me!!!), we ended our day with a visit to a Baha'i temple, called the Lotus temple. Even though I am not religious, this was definitely a very, very special place. The gardens around the temple very truly beautiful, the whole area was extremely quiet and peaceful and the building itself was magnificent, flooded with natural light, very basic design, and a very open atmosphere. Nothing to give you creepy feeling in the stomach or make you feel all small and futile in the "face of God". It's amazing, I never thought that India would be a place to confront religion in such an intense way, but apparently it plays the major role in society and everyday life - even much more than in Morocco!
Well, after four days in Delhi, we thought we were ready to start discovering other parts of the country, explore Indian transportation, and venture out into the wild. The train station in New Delhi did not inspire too much confidence but nevertheless we decided to take a 20-hour train ride to Jaisalmer, the golden city in the Thar desert near the Pakistan border. This, however, is a story for another day.
Hello again from India, the country of contradictions! Last time, I shared some of my first impressions about this fascinating and chaotic country with you and I could add hundreds of new impressions by now, but first I wanted to share some of the things we saw at Delhi with you. And actually, the city with its old and new parts is a wonderful example for the contradictions of the country! But first, some history for all of those who like Gandhi's philosophy: the picture here shows the monument built in his honor and it is situated right where he was cremated after his assassination. It felt strange to be there and, at the same time, experience what is India today.
So, let's start our tour through India's capital with Old Delhi as we both did. Old Delhi is basically identical to what I described in the last post about the region where we stayed. It's chaos pure, thousands and thousands of people, very tiny streets, hundreds of shops all selling "very good thing" with "very special price",
lots of starring men, numerous wooden carts, cows, oxen, and huge markets for spices, clothing,... We made the mistake to go there on foot and I guess this is something tourists in India don't normally do. They take a rickshaw to the many attractions and thus cannot be bothered by the thousands of people. We, however, good
stuck somewhere in the middle of this chaos, in tiny streets where they don't seem to see a lot of white people and sometime even I felt rather awkward and not welcome. Poor David didn't like the place at all and we finally even took refuge in, ..., well yes, I have to admit it, Mc Donald's! But, strengthened by ice cream and some calm, we soon ventured out again and visited the Red Ford, a very beautiful defense system in the old city with lots of arches, temples, and gardens inside the impressive, massive, and red walls.
After a nice stop in the shadow of the trees and about 20 pictures of me taken by very strange guys, we went on to visit Jama Masjid, India's biggest mosque. Again, it was situated in the middle of chaos and it was hard work getting there but the effort was truly worth while. The building is stunning and the courtyard that has room for 20,000 praying persons makes you feel very small. I don't remember how I felt visiting mosques in Morocco in 2003 but this time I definitely had a queasy feeling near my stomach, asking myself what might be sounding from the huge speakers everywhere at
prayer time. Maybe it's the influence of the negative media cover on Islam on us that I didn't feel too good at a simple place of worship and peace but somehow I couldn't get over the idea that the words spoken in this place might not always be friendly towards us.... It's sad because I am pretty sure it's just a stupid feeling, but when we were visiting the Gandhi memorial afterwards I was still wondering what he'd say to the situation in the world today....
Enough of those gloomy feelings, I'd say but our next day brought some more strange thoughts for me. When visiting New Delhi, we started out with a temple built by one of India's superrich, Lakshmi-Narayan temple. It was a beautiful place, except for the hundreds of Swastikas everywhere on the walls and in pictures. The guide told us that it is one of the basic symbols of their religion here and that it stands for perfection, success, and accomplishment, but seriously, it gave me the creeps! So strange to see this symbol everywhere. (By-the-way, you can buy Hitler's Mein Kampf on every street corner here and one Indian guy told us already that his two greatest idols are Napoleon and Hitler - seriously, the creeps!!!).
New Delhi itself is very, very different from its old sister. It's much more what we'd expect of a nation's capital - developed, clean, bright, representative, and a lot less stressful to visit! :) For me personally, with my love for history, I
found the remains of the British Raj particularly impressive. The main boulevard between the India Gate and the palace of the vice roy is just enormous, you can almost feel the military parades going on, the buildings of the secretaries, the parliament, and the palace itself are not beautiful but very huge and impressive, and everything together towers on a little hill over the city. 
However, New Delhi has more to show than just its historical past. The new part of the city is rather modern, even though skyscrapers and super-modern movie theater or shopping complexes like in Bangkok are missing and I found it surprisingly green, something which in turn is missing in Bangkok! :) We spent some time in the shades of the gardens and strolled around the many shops in Connaught Place, enjoying international newspapers and the fact that you usually only had to tell people once and not ten times that you didn't want to buy anything.
After some trouble with rickshaw drivers, who first took us to a place where we didn't want to go, then offered to take us where we wanted to go for the triple of the actual price, and finally offered to take us to some shopping places instead (you really need to be patient in the country, this is good practice for me!!!), we ended our day with a visit to a Baha'i temple, called the Lotus temple. Even though I am not religious, this was definitely a very, very special place. The gardens around the temple very truly beautiful, the whole area was extremely quiet and peaceful and the building itself was magnificent, flooded with natural light, very basic design, and a very open atmosphere. Nothing to give you creepy feeling in the stomach or make you feel all small and futile in the "face of God". It's amazing, I never thought that India would be a place to confront religion in such an intense way, but apparently it plays the major role in society and everyday life - even much more than in Morocco! 
Well, after four days in Delhi, we thought we were ready to start discovering other parts of the country, explore Indian transportation, and venture out into the wild. The train station in New Delhi did not inspire too much confidence but nevertheless we decided to take a 20-hour train ride to Jaisalmer, the golden city in the Thar desert near the Pakistan border. This, however, is a story for another day.
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