In my opinion, a trip to India doesn't really count unless it includes a trip to the Taj Mahal. So a few of us flew up north for a long weekend to see one of the great wonders of the world. We had initially planned to go to a once a month full moonlight viewing of the taj on Friday as I had seen advertised online, but when I tried calling from a hospital phone to reserve tickets the man said "we're closed Friday" and hung up. Fortunately for this situation as well as our entire trip, Rohit, a good friend of mine from growing up now lives in Delhi and with his help (he knows the ins and outs of Delhi and Delhiites, speaks Hindi, and is incredibly helpful.) He called and found out the night viewings were every night that weekend except for Friday--naturally--and rearranged our hotel reservations for us in Delhi and Agra, a feat that would've taken us hours to do. (Of note, all sites, transportation, food, and cultural tidbits in this post are courtesy of Rohit.)
We hired a driver to take the 5 of us the 3 hours to Chennai for our flight. He drove the speed limit, pulled over to make phone calls, and we all had seatbelts... Which we surprisingly found frustrating rather than reassuring and wanted him to pick up the pace a little!
We made it to the airport and struggled through security--we had to check bags to bring our protective pepper spray and this required prescreening them ourselves multiple times and answering questions about the knife we decided to pack for no real reason. We all received pat downs, but the women got our own private rooms for decency as we got felt up by women in uniform.
Past security, we had plenty of time due to delays but no where to eat. We found the only restaurant there which was overpriced and gave us microwave "chicken" nuggets and other delicacies.
Getting on the flight required stamped tags on carry ons, multiple ticket and passport checks, and other annoying unnecessary checkpoints. The plane itself left something to be desired--it was very dirty, seats were torn, tray tables missing, and the food they served was covered in a sauce that looked and smelled like toxic waste. I lucked out though since the plane was half empty with an entire row of 8 seats to myself and slept most of the way despite being startled awake on multiple occasions for service items and trash collection. The Delhi airport is beautiful, by the way, and we were all pleasantly surprised by the toilet paper, soap, and paper towels available in the bathrooms! It’s the little things in life, don’t you think?
We hired a prepaid taxi from the police (to avoid scams) and squeezed five of us into the four seats. The second we left the airport, we knew we had entered a different world. New Delhi is a much more modern and international city, and, as India's second largest, is home to about 22 million people (note that NYC has about 12 million and lacks cows and ox carts in the streets--could you imagine??)
We stayed at a nice hostel called the Moustache Hostel in South Delhi, I only mention it because the name is pretty awesome and the owner was a squat guy with a thick mustache. So we dropped our stuff and tried to grab an auto (aka rickshaw aka tuck tuck) to our first destination--the Haus Kaus Village. I say tried because no one knew where anything was located and of the ones who did, no one was willing to use their meters--preferring to make an unfairly high rate for tourists.
Just outside Haus Kaus, we strolled through Deer Park where tons of deer live protected (and multiplying!) along with peacocks (India's national bird). Then it was Haus Kaus which is an urban village--an old low caste village that was bought up for a shit ton of money and now resembles the east village in NYC--quaint restaurants and bars with terraces touting happy hours and art shops, wall art, and people dressed to the T (not in traditional Indian clothes but western clothes as that demonstrates wealth in a city corrupt with massive amounts of unfairly distributed funds).
We stumbled around the ruins in the village which were our first cool Mughalai architectural gems. Then holed up on a bar terrace with kingfishers (India's pervasive cheap beer). We then headed to Imperfecto which was a cute restaurant decked out for valentines day with scented candles, hearts, and really expensive Indian wine (crazy tax to drink in public!)
Rohit joined us in time for us to venture out for street food exactly when a downpour started. Since we were sopping wet, we opted for an indoor restaurant instead and went to a 5 star Mughalai restaurant called Karims. We let him order a spread for the table and we demolished plates of butter chicken (amazing), tandoori mutton (melted right off the bone) and chicken, kebabs, some curries and salads, naan, paratha, and roti. We even risked it and had reverse osmosis water rather than bottled. We were stuffed and surprised when it all only cost about 6600 rupees or about $55 total. From there we went to his apartment and hung out with his worldly roommates and tried a local spiced rum called Old Monk.
The next morning we again struggled to find an auto who knew where humayun's tomb is (it's a unesco world heritage site, so you'd think they'd know) even when we showed it to them on a map, but we did get there and boy was it cold in the morning (after the rain and especially compared to southern India). Even the stray puppy was shivering. Entry for a foreigner was 25 times the cost of entry for an Indian, so I learned the phrase “But come on, I’m Indian,” (especially after my yoga instructor was convinced) in Hindi and tried it out at the ticket counter--to my credit, the guy at least understood me because it only backfired when he asked for some proof of identification.
We explored the tombs and mosques all of which are huge and intricate and impressive. Humayun's tomb was especially impressive and grand with sprawling gardens and fountains (it's kind of the architectural precursor to the Taj Mahal). It was really serene inside until a field trip of hundreds of primary school children came in screaming... Made even worse when they entered the high vaulted tomb that made their voices echo in every direction.
We tried to get an auto from there to our next tourist destination and encountered our first scam attempt. This one driver said he’d take us for 500 rupees and when we countered with 50 rupees (a generous offer for the distance we needed to cover) he said "yes 50 but first we stop at one shopping center." Some drivers drive tourists to stores or hotels (claiming your hotel has unexpectedly shut down) and wait in a nearby room for kickback from the venders. The other scams the guidebook said to watch out for that we didn’t encounter is poop-on-the-shoe and a hypnosis scam, which are fairly self-explanatory.
Next stop was Akshardam, a relatively new temple complex that had sprawling grounds and tons of intricately carved pillars and temples and statues and fountains. There were so many carvings that no plane of any structure was flat, it was all tiny designs carved out of marble and sandstone. We sadly weren’t allowed cameras to document how cool this looked.
While there we saw animatronic and IMAX (incredibly loud to begin with made even louder by the set of headphones we wore that shouted English over the Hindi) productions explaining the formation of this religion. They both involved a young boy leaving home with almost no possessions and becoming a yogi, protecting all living beings, and practicing nonviolence. We missed the first 5 minutes of the first production so it was not until after our visit that we found out what religion Akshardam was built for and in the meantime it felt very cult-ish. We ultimately found out it’s for Jainism, but if any religion, even mainstream ones, were depicted the way this one was, it would definitely appear to be a cult.
Hold tight for part 2!!
We hired a driver to take the 5 of us the 3 hours to Chennai for our flight. He drove the speed limit, pulled over to make phone calls, and we all had seatbelts... Which we surprisingly found frustrating rather than reassuring and wanted him to pick up the pace a little!
We made it to the airport and struggled through security--we had to check bags to bring our protective pepper spray and this required prescreening them ourselves multiple times and answering questions about the knife we decided to pack for no real reason. We all received pat downs, but the women got our own private rooms for decency as we got felt up by women in uniform.
Past security, we had plenty of time due to delays but no where to eat. We found the only restaurant there which was overpriced and gave us microwave "chicken" nuggets and other delicacies.
Getting on the flight required stamped tags on carry ons, multiple ticket and passport checks, and other annoying unnecessary checkpoints. The plane itself left something to be desired--it was very dirty, seats were torn, tray tables missing, and the food they served was covered in a sauce that looked and smelled like toxic waste. I lucked out though since the plane was half empty with an entire row of 8 seats to myself and slept most of the way despite being startled awake on multiple occasions for service items and trash collection. The Delhi airport is beautiful, by the way, and we were all pleasantly surprised by the toilet paper, soap, and paper towels available in the bathrooms! It’s the little things in life, don’t you think?
We hired a prepaid taxi from the police (to avoid scams) and squeezed five of us into the four seats. The second we left the airport, we knew we had entered a different world. New Delhi is a much more modern and international city, and, as India's second largest, is home to about 22 million people (note that NYC has about 12 million and lacks cows and ox carts in the streets--could you imagine??)
We stayed at a nice hostel called the Moustache Hostel in South Delhi, I only mention it because the name is pretty awesome and the owner was a squat guy with a thick mustache. So we dropped our stuff and tried to grab an auto (aka rickshaw aka tuck tuck) to our first destination--the Haus Kaus Village. I say tried because no one knew where anything was located and of the ones who did, no one was willing to use their meters--preferring to make an unfairly high rate for tourists.
Just outside Haus Kaus, we strolled through Deer Park where tons of deer live protected (and multiplying!) along with peacocks (India's national bird). Then it was Haus Kaus which is an urban village--an old low caste village that was bought up for a shit ton of money and now resembles the east village in NYC--quaint restaurants and bars with terraces touting happy hours and art shops, wall art, and people dressed to the T (not in traditional Indian clothes but western clothes as that demonstrates wealth in a city corrupt with massive amounts of unfairly distributed funds).
We stumbled around the ruins in the village which were our first cool Mughalai architectural gems. Then holed up on a bar terrace with kingfishers (India's pervasive cheap beer). We then headed to Imperfecto which was a cute restaurant decked out for valentines day with scented candles, hearts, and really expensive Indian wine (crazy tax to drink in public!)
The next morning we again struggled to find an auto who knew where humayun's tomb is (it's a unesco world heritage site, so you'd think they'd know) even when we showed it to them on a map, but we did get there and boy was it cold in the morning (after the rain and especially compared to southern India). Even the stray puppy was shivering. Entry for a foreigner was 25 times the cost of entry for an Indian, so I learned the phrase “But come on, I’m Indian,” (especially after my yoga instructor was convinced) in Hindi and tried it out at the ticket counter--to my credit, the guy at least understood me because it only backfired when he asked for some proof of identification.
We explored the tombs and mosques all of which are huge and intricate and impressive. Humayun's tomb was especially impressive and grand with sprawling gardens and fountains (it's kind of the architectural precursor to the Taj Mahal). It was really serene inside until a field trip of hundreds of primary school children came in screaming... Made even worse when they entered the high vaulted tomb that made their voices echo in every direction.
We tried to get an auto from there to our next tourist destination and encountered our first scam attempt. This one driver said he’d take us for 500 rupees and when we countered with 50 rupees (a generous offer for the distance we needed to cover) he said "yes 50 but first we stop at one shopping center." Some drivers drive tourists to stores or hotels (claiming your hotel has unexpectedly shut down) and wait in a nearby room for kickback from the venders. The other scams the guidebook said to watch out for that we didn’t encounter is poop-on-the-shoe and a hypnosis scam, which are fairly self-explanatory.
Next stop was Akshardam, a relatively new temple complex that had sprawling grounds and tons of intricately carved pillars and temples and statues and fountains. There were so many carvings that no plane of any structure was flat, it was all tiny designs carved out of marble and sandstone. We sadly weren’t allowed cameras to document how cool this looked.
While there we saw animatronic and IMAX (incredibly loud to begin with made even louder by the set of headphones we wore that shouted English over the Hindi) productions explaining the formation of this religion. They both involved a young boy leaving home with almost no possessions and becoming a yogi, protecting all living beings, and practicing nonviolence. We missed the first 5 minutes of the first production so it was not until after our visit that we found out what religion Akshardam was built for and in the meantime it felt very cult-ish. We ultimately found out it’s for Jainism, but if any religion, even mainstream ones, were depicted the way this one was, it would definitely appear to be a cult.
Hold tight for part 2!!
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