North India Part II: Delhi

Tweet

.. Continued from North India part I: Amritsar

 

The train to Delhi got stuck at Muzzafarnagar due to a electric failure and arrived at Nizamuddin station three hours late, at 11 am. I was staying at Stops Hostel, close to Chandni chowk. I did yoga for half an hour and headed for lunch to Kake di Hatti, one of the street joints in the top 10 list I picked off a web article. I ordered a shahi paneer with two rotis. The paneer was extremely soft and the red gravy tasty without being overwhelmed with garam masala. It was a great start to the Delhi culinary experience.

 

 

 

From the nearby New Delhi metro station, I took a metro headed to Gurgaon and got off at the Qutab Minar station. A shared rickshaw ride, wherein I was one of the two passengers in the front seat, brought me to the archaeological site.  The place far outweighed my expectations.  The tower is a lot more imposing as well as ornate face to face than one sees in pictures. There are many other interesting monuments in the complex, including a mosque and Allauddin Khilji's tomb. The architecture is a eclectic blend of Hindu and Persian styles. To top it all, the audio guide was excellent, based on a make believe conversation between a local girl from adjoining Mehrauli village and the various Sultans and Vazirs involved in building the complex over a couple of hundred years.

 

My next stop for the day was the Red Fort. By the time I reached, general admission was closed, so I bought a ticket for the sound and light show. While the individual buildings were closed to visitors, I could make out from their exterior that I wasn't missing much. The show too was a disappointment and I left a quarter of the way through. The red fort is best seen just from the outside for it's impressive ramparts.

 

Outside, Chandni Chowk was dazzling across the street. I paid a visit to the Sisganj Gurudwara, a small but impressive building with intricate lattices and an ornate ceiling, before embarking on my food tour of chandni chowk. First up was dahi bhalla at Nataraj. The place was very crowded and the fare on offer quite delicious, but can’t say they were the best dahi bhallas I’ve had. Next stop was Babu Ram Devi Dayal Paranthe Wale in Paranthe Wali Galli. The subzis that accompanied the crispy parathas were average, but both the mixed and gobi parathas I ordered lived up to their reputation of being one of the best in Delhi. Next I headed to Jung Bahadur Kachori Wala which was a disappointment. I am not used to having kachori with Aloo masala, nevertheless the dish was too salty and too spicy. I bought a plate of gulab jamuns at one crowded joint, ate one and gave one to a beggar outside a nearby temple – truth be told, more out of concern for my belly than the recipient's hunger.

 

To end the day, I took a cycle rickshaw back to the hostel. If cycling a loaded wagon around a dynamic obstacle course were an Olympic sport, India would win gold, silver and  bronze. I don't know what was more scary: sitting in one of these or walking on a road full of these. The near misses were amazingly close. I swapped places with the rickshaw driver for a bit. While powering it wasn't as issue, maneuvering the rickety contraption was impossible. I realized that their penchant to drive fast was more about saving energy rather than time - once you slowed it down, it took a lot of effort to get going again.

 

En route to the hotel, I stopped at the highly recommended Kuremal Mohanlal Kulfi Wale. To confuse matters, there were three adjacent shops with slightly different names, all with the photograph of the same Kuremalji, and all of them bereft of a single customer. I picked one at random and the kulfi was quite nice. Overall, most of the food I had during the evening was good, but the parathas were peerless.

 

I was hoping to catch a crowd at the hostel bar and have a beer, but there was only a couple having a quiet time together so I went to bed early. The next morning, I lost sleep at 4:30 am and after aimlessly surfing the web for an hour, went for a run on the ring road as well as the bylanes of Daryaganj. The hostel breakfast included a nice banana and chocolate pancake, and I chatted for a bit with the other guys in the kitchen. One of them was an Indian tax officer in the North East circle who had chosen to stay in the hostel rather than Government accommodation in order to interact with people outside his circle.

 

My goal for the day was to use only public transport to reach the sites I wanted to see. The first stop of the day was Humayun's tomb, commissioned by his wife. Made in red sandstone, it was a precursor to the Taj. It was impressive in itself, but no match to Shahjahan's masterpiece, and hardly anyone remembers the name of Humayun's wife - I forgot it a week within hearing of it.  On the upside, the crowds were light and one could enjoy the place peacefully and take people-free pictures.

 

I then continued to Lodi Gardens, worth a visit for the grounds itself, with some impressive monuments including the tomb of Sikander Lodi thrown in. It's really surprising that a city with the kind of greenery that Delhi has is widely considered the most polluted in the world.

 

From Lodi gardens I took a bus that I thought was headed to Bangla Sahib Gurudwara, but I was mistaken. I got off two stops later which was incidentally the one for Khan Market. I asked zomato for the top rated place in the complex, and as per it's advice, headed to The Big Chill. I ordered an aubergine and pepper panini with feta cheese. It was the best sandwich I've had in a long time. I was beginning to see why Delhiites living in Mumbai miss the food back home. I liked Khan market a lot - a mix of modern boutiques and old-style stores mixed with good places to eat in a traditional marketplace. A welcome change from the cookie cutter malls mushrooming all over the country.

 

After the meal, I took the correct bus to the Gurudwara. I got some beautiful pictures of it's reflection in the lake in the late afternoon sun. The next stop of the evening was Akshardham Temple, the largest Hindu Temple in North India. I was irritated at having to leave my camera in the cloak room due to security reasons. I understand that the fear of terrorist attacks is very real - after all the Akshardham temple at Gandhinagar was infiltrated 15 years earlier. However I fail to grapple how the Golden Temple allows cameras all the way in the inner sanctum while Akshardham bars them even in the grounds. Overall I wasn't too pleased with the aesthetics of the temple and the aggressive lighting, but the carved marble ceilings were brilliant. I also didn't like the fact that Prasad was only given to those devotees who had given a donation.

 

From Akshardham I took a bus to Rajghat. Google maps was my navigator for the day. Public transportation in Delhi has come a long way since the day of the dreaded Red line buses, the likes of which I have never used but heard stories from friends. As far as Gandhi is concerned, I neither hero-worship nor vilify him. I think that the inner workings of his mind, despite his prolific writing, might never be understood. He was a complicated but pivotal man. I visited the religious places earlier for cultural and architectural interest - ironically the visit to the resting place of this secular leader had a devotional tinge to it.

 

It was time for dinner as I exited Rajghat, and I walked past the hostel back to Kake di Hatti where I had lunch the previous day. I ordered a half dal makhani, half palak paneer and naan. The proprietor told me that he had a counter at the ITC Mumbai street food festival the previous year. I think his dal makhani was as good as the one at ITC, if not better.

 

Post dinner I walked to the nearby Jama Masjid. It closed just as I reached there and couldn't walk around in the grounds, but the walk through the markets did evoke the senses even though I was preoccupied in dodging the cycle rickshaws. When I returned to the hostel to pick up luggage, a party was on at the bar and I regretted having to leave. At the reception, a supposedly important journalist who was upset about some aspect of the stay was mentioning to the owners that he could destroy the hostel's reputation.  Once he left, I paid my compliments to them and discussed our views on solo and offbeat travel.

 

Delhi station seemed to have got a makeover in the past couple of days since my mental assault on it. The platform was clean and the public announcement mess had been cleaned up. This time I had approached it from the main gate, and thus was welcomed by a clear electronic display showing the time and platform of my train to Ajmer. The icing on the cake was that the train arrived on time.  

 

... To be continued (North India part III: Pushkar)