Elly in Smelly Delhi

by now i am actually in manali but as my last attempt to write this was thwarted that hilarious god of computers who waits til you type the last word to crash, it's taken me a while to try again!

we travelled to Delhi by sleeper train which was cool - comfy enough and not too cramped, plus we ended up sitting with an indian family who had bribed there way from thrid to second class with two bottles of whisky! and the son kept dragging ben off to go drink whisky with the "owner of the train"!

it stinks, there's no air and you can't even have a beer!

also i have learnt that if you look at peoples food in India they inevitabley force you to try some which is fine when it's Gobi Manchurian (cauliflower fried in a light batter served with a garlic and ginger gravy) bought from the family's restaurant unfortunately when the first thing is delicious nit lulls you into a false sense of security and suddenly you get invited to try the mum's home made food which turns out to be smoked chickpeas (not too bad) then a chapati smothered in lime pickle (just edible) then something that looks like a roasted courgette but is actually the most disgusting bitter vegetable in the world stuffed with cardamon pods (which if anyone doesnt know i loathe) - i just managed not to gag thankfully as everyone was loking at me waiting for me to say how lovely it was!

luckily at this point the train manager appeared and i was asked to move as he was more important than me - giving me a chance to surreptisiouly throw away the rest of the food i was clutching!

i have learnt my lesson

on the train on the way to delhi ben was reading the book and suggested we spend maybe a week in delhi visiting sites and seeing the city then we arrived and ben suggested we get a bus to manali as quickly as possible!

delhi in ben's words - "it stinks, there's no air and you can't even have a beer!"

it was our own fault as we decided to stay in Paharganj which is the traveller area - its basically a narrow street with lots of other even narower streets coming off it, on both sides of the street are shops selling the usual crap aimed at tourists and in front of these shops are people selling things on the street leaving very little room to walk - you are also further hampered by the constant stream of rickshaws and cows!

add to this a temperature of 42 and a pungent smell of rotting rubbish and cow shit (which made us both gag) and you have a hectic, claustrophobic, suffocating, stinking and extremely noisy place!

we found a place to stay that had a nice restaurant, internet cafe and travel agency all in the building to limit how much we had to go outside and after we booked our coach and realised we had four days to wait we realised what delhi did offer - air conditioned cinema!!!!

so we saw x-men 3 (fantastic but when is gambit going to appear!) and the da vinci code (entertaining but tom hanks just wasn't sexy - i think harison ford circa 1982 would have been perfect)

and on our rickshaw journeys around the city we saw that much of delhi was very clean and landscaped and beautiful and it was just where we were staying that was horrible, so we booked ourselves on a air con coach tour of New Delhi so we could do the tourist bit and learn a little about the place and then the morning of the tour ben was ill again so we had to cancel!!

i'm sure we'll be back at some point when we travel south in a few months so hopefully it will be a little cooler and we'll get our tour!

anyway enough of beaches and cities and scorching heat and time for hill stations, cold and the himalayas - just a 14 hours bus ride away!

xx

p.s. there are no pictures for this entry although i did consider capturing the wonderfully Indian site of the sacred cow snuffling through the rubbish!