Carol and Harold's India trip: October 8

We were up very early for a wonderful SKYPE session with Michelle and Ray. Although we don’t have WIFI in our flat, the CCS flat nearby does have it. So, if we sit in the far corner of the living room, we can connect to the internet (sometimes – not always).

The children were in rare form on Friday – lots of them came and they weren’t eager to sit still and learn. Luckily, we brought balls, bubbles and jump ropes with us so we let them burn off some energy.

After lunch, we had a short meeting discussing our placements and other CCS issues. Everyone seems pleased with their volunteer work, the flats, the food, etc. We are with a very good group; everyone gets along just fine. Most everyone left after the meeting for trips outside of Delhi (mainly to Agra and Jaipur). Since we are going on our extended trip after CCS and will visit these cities, we decided to stay home and putter around Delhi.

We left the flat before 9 AM on Saturday morning and took the subway to Connaught Place (CP), the commercial hub of Delhi. It is crammed with restaurants, bars, shops, cinemas, banks and airline offices. CP consists of three concentric circles with streets radiating from the center circle. We wanted to find the Government information bureau and a nice man passing by told us the main office was closed for the Games (the cycling, walking and marathon use Connaught Place for their events so many businesses were closed). But, he told us that there was another close by and he even talked to the rickshaw driver and told him where to take us. Well, the driver took us to a tour agency (not what we wanted) so, after talking to the agent, the driver took us back to where we started (rickshaw driver now 80 cents richer). Then another man came along and the whole process repeated. This time the rickshaw driver drove completely around the circle twice (with his meter running) and deposited us at another tour agency (directly across from where we started ) and then tried to convince us it was the Government office (hey, we weren’t born yesterday!). So the driver drove us a little farther and we decided we’d had enough (this driver now only 20 cents richer). For the rest of the day we stuck with the subway. Some of our rides today were on extremely crowded cars; but the people were always very polite. I was given a seat twice and Harold once. (They respect the elderly!)

Most of the day was spent in Old Delhi. Now there are parts of New Delhi which are older than Old Delhi, but let’s just skip over that fact. Old Delhi’s main street is Chandni Chowk – a wide avenue thronged by crowds, hawkers and rickshaws. Tiny bazaar-crammed lanes snake off the broadway like clogged arteries. After doing some shopping (Carol bought two more leggings ($3 each) for her kameezes and another dupatta (80 cents)), we visited the 17th century mosque called Fatehpuri Masjid. We then walked to the main attraction in Old Delhi – the Red Fort. This massive fort dates back to the peak of the Mughal’s power. Shah Jahan constructed it between 1638 and 1648. The walls extend for 2 km and vary in height from 18 m to 33 m. We thoroughly enjoyed walking around the beautiful grounds, seeing many buildings in wonderful condition and visiting the museum. We also had lunch at a restaurant on the grounds of the fort – a rice and chicken dish (murgi biryani) served with yogurt and a delicious mixed vegetable dish – all that plus two giant bottles of water was $5. After leaving the fort, we fought our way back to the subway (I wonder if we’ll ever get used to crossing streets. There are no pedestrian crosswalks – you just wend your way through the seven moving lanes of traffic and hope you live to see the other side of the street!) We went to a place to buy bus tickets for our excursion for next weekend. I’ll leave the details of this trip until later. We had dinner and are now ready to just collapse back in our flat. We must be getting old – we are exhausted!