Another Day in Delhi

This is our third guest-house room in Delhi, in a house that owner Ajay's grandfather built*. He says that he'd overcome family sentiment and rip it down to build a bigger hotel if he were allowed to but it's in a heritage zone so he can't. It's guarded by the Dog Who Does Not Like To Be Touched. Not an Untouchable dog- that's different.

Since we were in the neighbourhood, we started our day with Humayun's Tomb, in a thunderstorm. The thunder didn't drown out the much-amplified adjacent devotional sermonising and music show, the sound of which wafted appropriately around the domes and turrets. Humayun was the 2nd Mughal emperor - this was built in 1565. The inside could do with a bit of Jif and elbow grease- water blaster? -but the beauty and grace of the formal gardens is being enhanced by the toiling gardeners. The guy I was standing next to couldn't read the Koranic quotes in Arabic either- I could only make out Allah, rather frequently. I'd never understood the significance of this sort of filigree screen before.

The prophet was saved from his enemies by a spider's web...

Dogs are unclean animals in Islam, I believe, but nobody told this puppy that lives at Humayun's Tomb...

We also joined many, many Sundaying Delhi-ites at Purana Qila . The tower was built in 1556 and, unfortunately, caused medieval India's worst ACC moment when Hamuyun fell down the steps to his demise.

I'd seen these umbrella hats for sale in two dollar shops but never before have I seen anyone actually wear one. Against the sun, not the rain.

Many, many people shopping in one of Delhi's main matkets, too. Yet the henna-decorators- men, surprisingly- trace the fiddly designs with fierce concentration.

The kindly folk at Ajay's guesthouse (confusingly called One One which is almost the same as the name of Sanjay's wife's guesthouse...) loaded a box of mineral water into the car for the next stage of our trip, the part we have named Getting Out of Delhi.

Delhi Delhi Delhi

WELL HERE WE ARE!!! After a smooth flight-but 16 hours of it- we are here in Delhi. Arrived at 2 AM and then it took an hour to get a visa at the airport. (Kiwis have been able to get a visa on arrival since last year- the only English-speaking country in this category along with countries like Thailand and Cambodia. Is it because of Sir Ed?) Luckily, the rather taciturn driver from the Yatri House guest-house where we are staying was still waiting for us,on the very end of a long line of sleepy-looking blokes holding up signs in English,Hindi and Chinese. Plus entire families in their best silk embroidered outfits who'd come to pick up Cousin Raj -unless they just live there.

Or maybe the driver wasn't so much tacititurn as grumpy, as anyone would be after being kept from their bed at 3 a.m.

I don't know whether this guy's subsequent driving style was inspired by dissatisfaction or by malevolence but I like to think it was the former. Neither of us had any idea it was possible to travel through worm holes in space on the Delhi dual carriageway but that's the only way it could have been possible to get between that huge truck belching out a further contribution to the smog and that spindly motorbike carrying nana and grandad on the back, white sari and dhotis fluttering in grandson's face as he wove around the potholes.

Yes,Delhi is smokey and smells of cooking fires and pollution. Huge cranes tower over building sites hung with multicoloured fairy lights and all the broken old bits of concrete in the world have come to rest on the sides of the roads. Blokes teeter along the hard shoulder on bikes laden with their entire market stall, tables included. Those humps of tarpaulin held down with bricks are probably someone's house. A blaze of more fairy lights bedeck a huge Buddha or Hindu god at a roundabout.

Crazy,crazy, crazy says Rereata. Here she is in Yatri's quiet (ish), pleasant courtyard

Somebody's started drilling in a concrete wall next door to the room. It's a signal for us to go out into what is probably mayhem...