On the 18th I left Ramnagar shortly before 10 on a train bound for Delhi. I took a last glance at the foothills of the Himalayas as we left the station and from then on it was flat all the way to Delhi, 150 miles away. Actually, we were descending from about 1500 feet elevation at Ramnagar to about 700 in Delhi (according to the elevation signs in the New Delhi Railway Station). Almost every acre on the way was planted or ready for planting. Besides unidentified vegetables, I noticed sugar cane and wheat stubble. There were also ponds with birds. And I saw plowing with cattle and by hand. The six hour train ride cost me only 70 rupees (about $1.50) in second class, and it was fairly comfortable with padded seats and sufficient leg room. It was great to be on a train after three and a half months of buses: none of that incessant horn blowing; only the soothing rumble of the train. The train initially was only maybe a third full, but filled up at the first stop, Kashipur, and by the time we left Moradabad the aisles were jammed with people. It took us about two hours to reach Moradabad, where we spent an hour at the station. The 110 kilometers between Moradabad and Hapur took only about an hour and a half, so we were really racing, at over 40 miles an hour! We crossed the wide Ganges on the way. We slowed down on the way into Delhi, passing packed slum housing of sheet metal and plastic tarps right next to the tracks. We crossed the wide, dirty, sluggish Yamuna River and went right by the 60 foot walls of the 17th century Red Fort and reached the British-built red sandstone Old Delhi Railway Station about 4. I had hoped we would arrive at the New Delhi Station because the Paharganj backpacker hotel area is nearby. I walked to the metro, but the lines were enormous, so I took a cyclo-rickshaw through the narrow, crowded and interesting streets of old Delhi to Paharganj and got a good hotel for only 400 rupees (about $9) a night about 5:30. (The train trip had cost me 70 rupees but I paid more for the cyclo-rickshaw from the station (50 rupees) plus an autorickshaw to the station in Ramnagar (30 rupees)!) I was glad to discover that the main street of Paharganj, all torn up when I was there three and a half months earlier, was now repaved, though filled with the day's debris.
The next day was a beautiful sunny and warm day. I walked through the post-war New Delhi Railway Station, always a hive of activity (a sign in front says 400,000 people and 250 trains use it each day), and on a crowded walkway over the 16 platforms, with much activity to be seen below, to the metro station. On a loudspeaker in the railway station a women would announce the delay of a train and then say, "Any inconvenience is deeply regreted." I took a metro train two stops north and got off near Chandni Chowk, the main street of old Delhi leading to the Red Fort. I had planned to walk along it to the Red Fort, but there was a huge Sikh parade celebrating the birthday of Guru Nanak, the first guru, heading in the opposite direction. There were high school groups, men with swords, and hordes of people. It was all very colorful and interesting and I ended up spending maybe three hours watching it and walking along with it. There were martial arts demonstrations, lots of food being dispensed both from trucks in the parade and from stands along the route, and many colorful costumes. Many men and boys had swords or spears. There were all sorts of different types and colors of turbans. Bearded, fairly fierce looking men might have bright pink or yellow or lavender turbans, besides the more common red, blue, black and white ones. I took a photo of one big guy with a lime green turban and he came up to me and asked me where I was from. He was from Milwaukee.
I walked with the parade as far as the Fatehpur Mosque, at the opposite end of Chandni Chowk from the Red Fort. I went into the spice bazaar near there and then into the mosque, which was built in the mid-17th century and has a wide courtyard. Streams of white clothed, white skull-capped men had left it earlier after Friday midday prayers. I looked around for a while inside and then sat down under the arcade for a while. It was quiet after all the commotion outside. Men were sleeping here and there and a boy was flying a kite in the courtyard. A 12th grader sat next to me to practice his English and told me he was a "Mohammedan." I've also noticed that Moslems here are sometimes called "Musalmans."
Just before dusk I walked down Chandni Chowk to the Red Fort, reaching it just before dark. I didn't go in, but walked south in the dark past the giant Jama Masjid, the mosque built just after the Red Fort, and ate at a somewhat famous restaurant called Karim's nearby, sitting with a Syrian and an Eqyptian, both engineers working in the UAE. After dinner I walked back to the Chandni Chowk metro station only to find it was closed because of "technical difficulties," so I took a cyclo-rickshaw back to Paharganj.
It was sunny but cooler the next day. It was a Saturday and I figured the Red Fort would be especially crowded, so I headed south to Connaught Place. It, too, was no longer a torn up mess, as in August, and was even fairly quiet on that Saturday morning. There is a great grassy circular park in the middle, where I remember reading mail in 1979 after not having had any mail since Istanbul two months earlier. It certainly is different now with the internet. I walked to the Jantar Mantar, a monumental astronomy complex built by the Maharajah of Jaipur in the early 18th century. He built his instruments to observe the sun and stars out of brick and it is all quite interesting with huge sundials. From there I took the metro south and then walked to the Nehru Museum in the house where he lived when Prime Minister from independence in 1947 to his death in 1964. It is a huge mansion, with great lawns, apparently built for the commander-in-chief of the army during the British era. It was filled with interesting photos, newspapers and other displays, plus his two offices, sitting rooms, his bedroom and that of this daughter Indira. I ended up spending 3-4 hours there. It was fairly crowded, with a lot of friendly but noisy school children. I walked from there to a statue of "Indian Martyrs," including Gandhi and others, and then across the Rajpath, New Delhi's central thoroughfare, in the dark to a metro station.
It was sunny and cool the next day, and in the morning I took the metro to near the Rajpath and then walked to it past the well-guarded circular Parliament building, which was attacked by Islamic terrorists a few years ago. There was even a soldier with a rifle behind sandbags in the nearby metro station. New Delhi, south of old Delhi, was built by the British from 1911 to 1931 to serve as India's capital and they built on a monumental scale. The two Secretariat buildings are enormous and are a fusion of European (lots of Grreco-Roman columns) and Indian elements. They, too, were well-guarded. I walked past them to the huge residence of the President, formerly that of the Viceroy. I think it has something like 340 rooms. You can only see it through the enormous gates, so I turned around and walked back past the Secretariats again and then south along the wide, orderly, tree-lined streets of New Delhi to the Indira Gandhi Museum, passing the well-guarded residences of the commanders of the Army, Navy and Air Force in British-built white columned mansions behind red brick walls now topped with green metal extensions and barbed wire above that. The museum was closed for Guru Nanak's birthday, so I walked further south to Safdarjung's tomb, a late (mid-18th century) Moghul tomb for a man who must have been a particularly favored and wealthy minister. It is a large, domed building in a large garden, and it was quite nice in there. There were not many visitors. From there I walked east to the Lodi Gardens, named after the dynasty overthrown by the Moghuls in 1526. It contains some large tombs of the Lodi Sultans and on that Sunday afternoon also contained lots of picnicking and cricket-playing Indians.
From the Lodi Gardens I walked further east to a series of narrow lanes leading to a winding bazaar that finally led to the Hazrat Nizam-ud-din, a Sufi shrine filled with worshippers. It contained several graves besides the Sufi saint, including that of Shah Jahan's daughter. I went into one of the shrines containing a grave and it was filled with sweet-smelling flowers. The main shrine had a sign saying, "No ladies allowed inside." The people were very friendly, with some asking to have their photos taken, including an old man and his wife who posed most solemnly. I spent about two hours there, until past 6, watching all the activity. There were singers in front of the main tomb, accompanied by a dhol (two sided drum) and a harmonium. I took a long autorickshaw ride back to my hotel from there and the driver surprisingly agreed to use his meter, so the 4-5 mile trip cost me only about $1.25, about half of what they usually charge. It was chilly that night and I put on my fleece to go to dinner.
It was cloudy and cool the next morning and I would have spent the day in a museum, but on Mondays the museums are closed, so I took a 45 minute metro ride south to near the Qutb Minar. The metro trains were packed at the New Delhi Railway Station stop and I had to wait for several trains to pass before I could wedge myself into one. The subway opened in 2002, so it's quite modern, but the people push and shove to get in and out at the busy stations like rats leaving a sinking ship. I wonder if people ever stumble and get trampled. One guy lost his watch in the tumult.
From the Qutb Minar metro station I took an autorickshaw to the Qutb Minar itself. It is a 240 foot high minaret next to the ruins of India's oldest mosque, built by the first Muslim sultans of Delhi around 1200. The minaret is about 50 feet wide at the base, tapering to maybe 8 feet at the top and is quite impressive, with some beautiful intricate carving on it. The nearby mosque also has some fine carving and is particularly interesting because some of the columns have representations of figures, including dancing women. An inscription over the mosque's main entrance reportedly says that the stone from 27 "idolotrous temples" was used to build the mosque. The faces of the figures are defaced. The Qutb Minar area was quite crowded with people, including hundreds of what appeared to be young Indian police or military cadets. The mosque also includes a famous iron pillar, 25 feet high, that has never rusted, from the 5th century AD or so.
I spent a couple of hours there and then took an autorickshaw and while traveling on it discovered I had mistakenly told the driver to take me to a place miles away from where I really wanted to go, so I changed plans and had him take me to the Purana Qila, a giant fortress near the Yamuna built by Sher Shah, who defeated the second Mughal ruler, Humayun, and ruled Delhi for a few years in the mid 16th century. He was quite a builder and there is a big mosque and a tower inside the walls. When Humayun regained power in 1555 after Sher Shah's death, he used the tower as a library and was killed the next year after a fall coming down its steps.
I walked from the Purana Qila to the India Gate, the 140 foot high stone memorial arch commemorating the 90,000 Indians who died in World War I and in the Northwest and Afghanistan campaigns of 1919. Under it is the grave of an unknown soldier from the 1971 India-Pakistan War guarded by soldiers and an eternal flame. There were big crowds around the arch, even on this cool and cloudy late afternoon. From the India Gate the wide Rajpath leads to the President's House more than a mile and a half away. From the India Gate I walked back to Paharganj, which took me more than an hour, longer than I expected.
The next morning there was another mele at the metro station trying to get into the train. I took it again to the Central Secretariat stop near the Rajpath and then walked to the National Museum. This was another cool, gray day and I spent it at the museum, from about 10 to 4:30. It contains great Hindu and Buddhist statuary and Moghul miniature paintings among its many treasures. There was also a section on arms and armor and on the Indian Navy. The only problem was the seemingly endless lines of noisy school children who are marched through the museum without stopping to see anything, as if they could imbibe some of their history and culture by proximity. About 1 pm I was hungry and found the canteen in the basement were I got a great lunch of five fluffy, crunchy, little (maybe 4-5 inch diameter) puri and some vegetable dish for only 10 rupees (less than 25 cents), plus tea for 5 rupees. (Later I found the cafeteria on the top floor and it was considerably more expensive.) From the museum I walked back to Paharganj in the late afternoon/early evening (it gets dark soon after 5:30), stopping at the very fine Imperial Hotel on the way. It is filled with Raj-era paintings, photos and engravings, hundreds of them, and they were very interesting. There were paintings of British king emperors and viceroys, and of maharajas, too. It is beautiful big hotel, with the smell of jasmine in the air. It is somewhat nicer than the hotel where I am staying.
Back in Paharganj there was a wedding party along the main street that night, with the groom in a turban and riding a white horse. Boys and young men held elaborate lanterns powered by a portable generator and men danced in front of the groom to the very loud music of a sound truck and a live uniformed band, mostly, or maybe entirely, of horns and drums. He was on his way to claim his bride. I had seen a similar procession in Ramnagar the night before I left for Delhi, though there the groom, in a plumed turban, rode a high wooden chariot drawn by two whitish horses and pulling the generator that powered the lights. He was accompanied by light bearers that held white fluorescent lights about 4-5 feet long. There were about 10-20 of them and at first I thought they were light sabers held in procession by jedi knights.
It was cloudy and cool again the next day and I made my way to the Indira Gandhi Museum. This time I walked to the Rajiv Chowk metro station in Connaught Place rather than do battle in the New Delhi Railway Station metro station. This museum is in the house where she lived from her father's death in 1964 to her own assassination in 1984. It is quite interesting with many of the rooms, including her bedroom, office, dining room and living room, left as they were at her death, with interesting furnishings. There are also rooms full of photos and other displays, including the blood-stained sari she was wearing when assassinated. There are also rooms dedicated to her son Rajiv, prime minister after her death until 1989, which include photos of his Italian-born wife Sonia, now head of the ruling Congress Party, and the tattered remains of the clothes and the high top sneakers he was wearing when he was blown up by a Tamil suicide bomber in 1991. The museum was jam-packed with Indians, many of them in groups pushing and shoving, and no westerners other than me. On the grounds of the white, colonnaded British-built building is a memorial on the spot where her Sikh bodyguards shot her.
From there I walked to the nearby Gandhi Memorial in the Birla House, where he spent his last 144 days from September 1947 to his assassination in January 1948. It is another British-built huge mansion, though the two rooms that Gandhi stayed in are very simply furnished and left as they were when he died. The mansion is filled with interesting photos, dioramas and other displays, and from his rooms concrete footsteps lead across the lawn to the spot where he was assassinated on his way to evening prayers. It began to rain while I was there, at about 2:30 and lasted for more than an hour. My thermometer registered 68 degrees during the rain. (During my stay here in Delhi highs have generally been in the 70's and lows in the 50's.) Late in the afternoon as I walked to the metro it was quite foggy and drippy. Back in Paharganj there was another Sikh parade that evening, with more food being dispensed. The main street was even more crowded and dirty than usual. I got pickpocketed in the crowd, losing only 50 rupees but also a little notebook.
It was cloudy and cool the next morning and I took the metro across the Yamuna to the new Akshardam Temple, built in 2000-2005 by thousands of volunteers. It is the world's largest Hindu temple, with a display proudly displaying this fact with a certificate from the Guinness Book of World Records. It is a fantastic place, called by some a Hindu Disneyland, and I quite liked it, but then I am very fond of Disneyland. The temple itself and the other buildings are beautifully decorated, with thousands of carved figures of Hindu gods and heroes, plus many animals. The best are a series of more than a hundred elephants carved on the main temple's base, each from stones of 20 tons. The stories about the elephant carvings, with inscriptions in Hindi and English, are lovely, focusing on non-violence, cooperation and vegetarianism.
The temple was built by the followers of Swaminarayan, who lived from 1781 to 1830 and has been succeeded by five swamis, the current one almost 90. As an eleven year old he left his family and traveled as a mendicant all over India (and to Mount Kailash in Tibet, allegedly in nothing but a loincloth) before stopping in Gujarat at an ashram. There is a large gold statue of him in the center of the temple, with smaller gold statues of his successor swamis. Near the temple are three huge halls, the first with animatronic exhibits about Swaminarayan's life, the second with a beautifully done IMAX movie about his life, and the third with a boat ride through Indian history, revealing that in the Vedic Age (before Christ) Indians invented the airplane and discovered atomic theory, among other things. It was all quite enjoyable and well done. There is also a sculpture garden of great Indian men and women, including a guy who, the plaque claims, invented wireless communication in 1899 (that is, before Marconi) but is better known, it says, for his remarkable finding that "plants have feelings." The temple was very crowded by the time I left about 3:30. I took the metro to the Hauz Kaus area and tried to find it and the tomb of Firoz Shah, but it was getting late and dark at 5, so I gave up and took the metro back towards Paharganj.
After a misty morning, the sun finally appeared the next morning a little before 10. I took the metro and then walked to the Red Fort. I had been waiting for a sunny day. The fort is a huge enclosure, built by Shah Jahan, the builder of the Taj Mahal, when he moved his capital from Agra to Delhi in the 1640's. I spent the day there, exploring the remaining palace buildings and the extensive grounds. There were lots of people there. The palaces were pillaged by the Persian Nadir Shah in 1739, with the rich palace decorations, including jewels encrusted in the walls and the Peacock Throne, taken to Persia. Nonetheless, the magnificent buildings, though denuded and in bad repair, are still interesting, and it was pleasant to walk around and sit here and there. There is a marble artificial stream bed flowing through the palaces. I had a lunch of raisins and cashews that I had brought with me and shared part of it with some friendly squirrels. There were lots of birds in the air and trees, and I saw several woodpeckers around a step well on the grass and in a tree. Also, there are three museums inside, including one on the struggle for independence in one of the large British-built buildings inside the fort built when the British occupied the fort from the time of the Indian Revolt in 1857 to independence 90 years later. The Indian Army occupied the fort from independence to 2002 and it is now much nicer than I remembered it from 1979. I had dinner at Karim's near the Jama Masjid and then returned to the Red Fort for the hour long sound and light show at 7:30, which cost only 60 rupees (and was worth about that). It was chilly there at night.
The next morning was sunny again and I took a cyclo rickshaw from the east side of the train station through old Delhi to the Jama Masjid and spent maybe two hours there. It is India's largest mosque, built by Shah Jahan. The two minarets rise to 130 feet, and I climbed the southern one. The views of the mosque itself from above and of the nearby walls of the Red Fort were great, though hazy, but most of the rest of the city was hidden by the dense haze. The white domed, red sandstone mosque is simply decorated, but quite beautiful. There were lots of tourists, almost as many as the number of faithful there that Saturday morning. It was pleasant to wander around the wide, sunny courtyard and through the shady arcades and prayer halls.
I had lunch at Karim's and then walked through the crowded bazaar in front of the mosque, and then south to the National Gandhi Museum, opened in 1981. It has very interesting photos and displays, including the walking stick Gandhi used in his Salt March in 1931 to Dandi, his sandals, his dentures, two teeth (his last two, I think) extracted in the 1930's, the blood stained dhoti and shawl he was wearing when assassinated, and one of the bullets that hit him. Nearby in a beautiful park, for the most part surprisingly clean of litter, is the Raj Ghat, where he was cremated. The area is quite different now than it was in 1948, judging from the photos of his cremation. Nearby are the cremation spots, now memorials, to Rajiv Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. There is a smaller one for Sanjay Gandhi, the son of Indira who died in a plane crash in 1980. They are all different but all quite simple. Only Rajiv's has a representation of him.
From there I walked to the walled city built by Feroz Shah, one of the pre-Moghul Delhi sultans. I was there at dusk, from about 5 to 5:45. The few remaining structures inside are in ruins, as the material was used by Shah Jahan to build his city, but there are the remains of a mosque and a structure with a sandstone pillar originally erected by the 3rd century BC Emperor Ashoka and transported to this spot by Feroz Shah. From there I took a cyclo rickshaw to the railway station and walked through it to Paharganj.
The next morning I finally booked my train tickets out of Delhi, first to Alwar and then to Jaipur, both in Rajasthan. Booking them was very easy at a special office in the train station for foreigners. As usual, I've stayed here in Delhi longer than expected. I took the metro to near the Crafts Museum and spent a couple of hours there. The stuff inside is almost all 19th and 20th century and there are some very interesting wooden sculpture, beautiful textiles, and architectual pieces. I took an auto rickshaw from there south to Humayun's tomb, the first example of Moghul architecture, built by his widow who was the mother of his son and successor Akbar. This building, reached through two gates, is a beautiful domed building of red sandstone and white marble surrounded by a Persian style park. (His widow was Persian.) It was very crowded on that Sunday afternoon, but the grounds are so extensive that it was easy to get away from them. His marble tomb in the center of the huge building is very simple. In other rooms and on the terrace and in the gardens are other graves, about a hundred of them. And there are several other large tomb buildings (though dwarfed by Humayun's), including one said to be that of his barber, though that seems unlikely to me. I stayed until after the sun's rays left the building. The sky and the trees were filled with birds, including parrots, magpies, some sort of crow and quite a few hawks. At nightfall I took an autorickshaw back to Paharganj.
The next day (today) I spent the morning and early afternoon in Paharganj, having a long breakfast, talking with an Italian journalist, updating this blog and then having lunch. I took the metro in the afternoon from the train station to Chandni Chowk and walked to the 17th century Jain Temple across from the Red Fort, but it was closed. I walked back on the crowded Chandni Chowk, which originally, in Moghul times, had a canal down the middle to reflect the moonlight, and took what is probably my last metro ride, at least for a while (no more minding the gap), to Rajiv Chowk and spent some time in a Connaught Circus bookstore before walking back to Paharganj, arriving before dark for a change.
I've enjoyed Delhi but am looking forward to leaving. There are a lot of hassles in this city. My backpack will be lighter. I left my long underwear and wool cap behind before I reached Delhi and a few days ago I mailed my down jacket home, for about $22. I purchased it in Manali when I first arrived in August for about $60 and used it for exactly three days, but I was glad I had it those three days.
No comments:
Post a Comment