Dehli, Agra
Thursday, February 21st, 2008And so to dehli – big bad dehli if you believe what alot of people say about the place. I was expecting this massively filthy sprawling mess of a city where it would be hassle hassle hassle from the second I stepped off the bus from jaipur to the moment I take my seat on the train to amritsar. It didn’t get off to the best of starts, the place where the bus dumped me was on the polar opposite side of the city that I had expected to be dropped at. Bear in mind that there are 12 million people in this city. I had to exit the bus quickly, luckily I only had one bag to look after and even I couldn’t lose the big bright red backpack. The first objective when you get to any place is to find a place to stay – I had the added responsibilty this time to find a place that would be acceptable for my brother who was visiting me while I was in dehli. There was one place that seemed to fit the bill and my budget, about 5 kilometres north of Old Dehli is Manju Ka Tilla – a commune set up for tibetan refugees. It claims to be a peaceful escape from the madness of the city so for the week that I will be in dehli I figured it was the perfect fit.
The trouble though was that all the places listed in the guide book were booked out, I must have tried at least 6 or 7 before finding one which had a spare room. Luckily enough it was a twin room, hot water and a tv. All for 300 rupees a night, in other words ‘feck all’. Whether it would live up to diarmuids high expectations time will tell – it does remind me of a conversation we had some weeks ago about him wanting a good hotel and didn’t mind paying 5000 rupees per night for one, I could’ve cut myself a tidy profit there but I am too honest to do such a thing.
I had a couple of days before his arrival – time to check out my passport situation. It was just a case of applying for a new one. After that I just gave myself a few days to arrange our trip to agra to see the taj and spent the rest of the time hanging around the tibetan commune sampling the food (they serve beef and pork here – mad stuff) and trying to haggle with the tibetan stall owners. They couldn’t be more unlike local indians, they refuse to haggle over prices, the price is the price – which is no fun at all. They don’t beg you to look in their shops or even acknowledge you as you walk down the street. Its weird, its almost as if you are at home. I dunno how I am going to cope when I get to a first world country, kinda getting used to the attention.
I met diarmuid in dehli airport friday afternoon. Its completely surreal meeting someone you know so well in such strange surroundings. We jumped in the cab and made our way back to the commune. Luckily enough he didn’t object to the room so we were sorted for the weekend. Now for some sightseeing. We grabbed a rickshaw into the red fort in the middle of the old part of dehli. Its this massive fort with huge thick red walls, it was nice to walk around there for an hour or so and catch up on all the latest goings on back home. After that we took a rather long walk in search of connaught place which I guess you could describe as the grafton street of dehli. To get there though we took a pretty dodgy route, the sun was going down and the street lights weren’t the may west after a brief stop for some food and some consultation with both diarmos fancy new gps phone and the more reliable dude that worked behind the counter in the pharmacy across the road we were on our way. Connaught Place is Massive, because this part of Dehli is just about 50 years old it is all planned out and very tidy, the Place itself is circular and takes about 25 minutes to walk around the circumfurence. We were more interested in sampling the local tipple so we ducked into a bar and selflessly propped it up for the remainder of the night.
We fell out of that place at about 11.30 and jumped into a rickshaw out to manju ka tilla. The rickshaw driver was a complete nutter, he insisted on giving us a disco version of a rickshaw by pumping up the volume to the last and swerving the vehicle violently to and fro – he even offered us a spin at one stage – I was half tempted if I was honest but before we knew it we were gone again. We made it back in one piece somehow – there waiting for me was a packet of Tayto – oh lord how good was that packet of tayto, it didn’t stand a chance.
Our train the next morning was at 7.00, this required us to be up at 5.45 as the train station was the other side of the city. I was dying, shocking hangover, my only consolation was that diarmo was as bad as me so couldn’t rididule me. We took a taxi to nizamuddin train station and jumped onto the train which took about 3 hours to get to agra. Agra not surprisingly was pretty busy though we didn’t get that much hassle from the touts. We managed to get a dude to bring us around for the day for a pretty good price, it involved us stopping into some shops so he could get some commission which to me is a pain in the hole but diarmo was interested enough to see what was in the shops, tis good for a bit of shopping aswell. Lazy fecker left all the bargaining up to me though.
The driver we got was a decent skin aswell, a muslim whos name sounded like hashish but was something else spoke about how he planned to marry off his daughters in the next year or two. I offered to take one of his hands for nothing but he wouldn’t budge, had something against catholic boys from ireland, not good enough for his little girl! oh well..
After that it was the taj – its an expensive site (relatively) and the queue was a pain in the ass but the Taj – Its just incredible. Its massive, its beautiful at one stage we were sat beside it talking about some random crap – probably about how woeful liverpool are this season – when I had to litterally thump diarmo and say, dude we’re sitting right beside the Taj Mahal. Its hard to get your head around it, its impossible to take it all in. After the taj we took in agra fort which I intended to take in first as I knew the taj would still be in our heads. On its own its still a very attractive sight but it and the taj on the one day makes it a little tough on it. After a beautiful feed we headed back on the train to dehli where an early night was called for and was got!!
The next day we didn’t do much, though I am sure some of you have already seen the footage of my negotiation with this tiny kashmiri shopkeeper. Some of you have even berated me over the amount I was arguing over with him. The thing you have to understand is that it is fun negotiating with the likes of him, I would’ve given him the money if I knew I would be that entertained but as diarmo found out that day once they agree a price they won’t accept anything lower or higher than that price. It becomes a matter of principle to them. We walked around the shops some more and picked up random bits and bobs all the time negotiating the best price. We had a bloody delicious feed in the Chicken Inn (this place is sounding more and more like kilnaleck every bloody day) before going for yet more beers in connaught place.
Diarmo caught his flight just about that night. He made it back to dublin in one piece I have been told. It was great seeing him, in a way it was a kind of a test for me to arrange the weekend and make sure everything went off okay. Its not often that I end up having to look after him in some situations it was always the other way around when I was growing up but because I have spent this little amount of time in india I had a better idea of how to engage the indian lads. It can be intimidating when you are fresh off the plane and you can easily fall into the trap of seeing them as the enemy but I can be so rewarding when you don’t fall into the trap as you can see from the clip below of my haggling session with Ahkmed.
The following day I took in some parks around dehli, called into the embassey to check up on my passport application before finally buying a ticket out of dehli to go to amritsar and the golden temple… Dehli was great which surprised me no end, I will definitely return…
Later,
Phil
Phil Gill