India is proving to be quite a fascinating place. I feel as though I’ve had a pretty good primer on congested cities while visiting Cairo and on Indian culture while visiting Singapore and Fiji (where there are large Indian populations).
Although Delhi has a comparable population to Cairo (12 vs 10 million), it seems much greener with lots of broad-leaf trees and grassy parks, and is much more spread out. Kind of like Manhattan vs. Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, I guess. It’s something my fellow travellers seem to notice immediately as well.
Unlike Cairo, however, there is a much greater variety of cultures, so I never seem to get tired of looking around. I’ve seen just about every vehicle imaginable travelling down the roads, and I have been through some sections that are even more congested than Cairo. And I’ve seen just about every kind of colourful food, flower, and craft product being sold from vendors alongside the roads.
There does seem to be a lot more poverty about, with beggars on just about every street corner. One major bonus about travelling around India (from my Delhi perspective, anyway) is that most people seem to be able to understand and speak English.
I’ve signed up for a few tours (gasp!) put on by the Indian government to help with my tight schedule here. The good thing about the tours is that the tourists are mostly Indians themselves (currently living overseas or in other Indian states), so I feel as though I’m not isolated from the culture I’m viewing. I did a tour of Old Delhi yesterday afternoon and got to see some exquisitely designed buildings in the “Red Fort”.
We also visited where Gandhi was cremated, as well as a few Hindu and Muslim temples. All the people on the tour were very nice and sociable. I will do the New Delhi tour with them after travelling to Agra and the Taj Mahal tomorrow.
I spent most of my afternoon today browsing through the National Museum of India, which had objects dating back to 4000BC. There were lots of intricate stone carvings from temples and a large collection of “Indian Miniature Paintings” that were extremely detailed, beautiful, and absolutely fascinating to pore over. I spent a long time scrutinising each one. One guard eventually walked up to me and said: “You must be a teacher.”
My guesthouse is in Connaught Place, a great central place in an area known as the “circus,” which is loaded with good restaurants and shops. I even have a TV in my room with 99 cable channels of pure Indian entertainment. No Western channels in sight!
You have to hand it to this country. With over a billion residents, it’s huge (poised to be the world’s largest in the next 20 years) and is definitely wrapped up in itself with little need to look to the West. It has its own movie industry (Bollywood’s bigger than Hollywood these days), its own culture, etc, etc. It hardly seems as though anyone around here even pays attention to what’s happening in the U.S. (unlike many countries around the world). I haven’t ever felt that way in any country I’ve visited OUTSIDE of the U.S. (the most famous of all for navel gazing).
