Our lucky streak ran out in Agra, and the three hour late train became four hours late, then five, then six and finally about seven and a half hours late. At 10:30pm we boarded the train, slept for an hour or two then found ourselves booted out ino the centre of New Delhi at 3:30am. Walking to our hotel proved to be far more difficult than I’d anticipated, with rickshaw drivers really the only people around – not always the most helpful guys to ask for directions if you’re not going to enlist their services. After several slightly flustered phone calls to the hotel, we made our way to backpacker central - Main Bazaar, Paharganj.
We stood at the dark entrance to the bazaar, looking at each other. Had Delhi been hit by an earthquake? Was there some terrible terrorist bombing or enormous explosion in Paharganj that we’d completely failed to find out about? Paharganj is famous as Delhi’s mini Khao San Road. A place full of cheap fleapit hotels, cafés serving banana pancake and Israeli salad; a street lined with shops for buying cheap jewellery and getting dreadlocks or Om shaved into your head. And now, at 4 o’ clock on a humid May morning, it was in ruins. Shopfronts had been blasted away – no windows, no doors, just the shells of buildings, some with the merchandise still inside. The entire stretch of the bazaar is lined with piles of bricks and rubble, dangling wires, parked scooters coated in thick layers of dust. Shellshocked, we stumble onwards. We’re relived to arrive at Hotel Namaskar, to a brightly lit reception area and the friendly night manager. Renovations, he explains to us. Delhi Commonwealth Games.
So the Commonwealth Games are on in October. The local government expects to get a huge influx of tourists in Paharganj, long decried as one of the filthiest areas in Delhi, so they’ve embarked on a bull-headed clean-up campaign. With four months to go, Paharganj looks like Ground Zero. In fact all of Delhi is under construction and the world’s most polluted city is reading pollution levels radically higher than normal. And the funny thing is, nobody in India gives a shit about the Commonwealth Games. It’s just not cricket.
So far we haven’t found a single local who is at all convinced the massive construction projects will be finished in time. Actually, it’s a shame because the projects could be a fantastic benefit to Delhi’s flagging transport and infrastructure systems. It’s just that now they’re on a deadline you can bet everything will be rushed through and half done. As our mate Charles from Mount Abu would say - Welcome to India.
Despite the endless construction-related eyesores and horrendous pollution, Delhi is still a fabulous city to visit. I’ve been reading William Dalrymple’s The Last Mughal, a vibrant portrait of Delhi before, during and after its vengeful ransacking by the British (it was the staging post for a massive Indian uprising in 1857) and it’s clear that of all India’s big cities, Delhi is the richest in colour and history and forgotten secrets.
Once again though, some of the most extraordinary monuments have not been given the care and respect they deserve. Delhi’s Red Fort is still incredible, and to think the British so thoroughly desecrated it is nothing short of a tragedy, but now under the auspices of the Archaeological Survey of India, a slow but visible decay and unchecked vandalism still continue. If you could imagine the gardens of the Fort still flourishing with groves of mango trees, the fountains flowing with perfumed water, the audience hall of the King still home to the legendary Peacock Throne, the mosque alive with prayer and the palace of the begums still sparkling with inlaid silver and precious stones... this would have been one of the most spectacular man made creations on this earth. In its day the Red Fort would have put the Taj Mahal to shame. The Mughals knew the very limits of extravagance. Every building today is dull and conservative by comparison.
Equally as fascinating is getting lost at night among the life in the packed streets around the old district of Chandi Chowk, where one lane is so pungent with spices that everyone periodically erupts into a chorus of sneezes, and another street is dominated by fruit sellers and the moonlit spires of a mosque. We also by-chance visited a Jain Temple near the Red Fort which housed an urban Bird Hospital. Peeking inside the hallways filled with cages full of pigeons and parrots, some in a shocking state of injury and distress, turned out to be a very unsettling experience. Since Jains believe in the absolute sanctity of life, no bird can be put down, so the people who claim to help them are often only prolonging their misery. Only in India could such a ‘hospital’ exist. Far more soothing was the Lotus Temple of the Ba’hai faith, a white marble structure which draws immediate comparisons to the Sydney Opera House and where a 15 minute prayer session included verses from the Bible, the Koran and the Mahabarata.
In Delhi we also experienced the fast, clean and efficient Metro railway. If Delhi and Manila, two of the most disorganised cities on the planet can have Metros, then why the hell can’t Sydney get its act together and get its public transport system into the 21st century?
Soon though, we were about to leave our relative dependence on public transport far behind. We’d successfully arranged for 15 days hire of a Royal Enfield Bullet motorcycle, and were finally about to leave behind the heat of the plains for the wild beauty of the Himalayas.
