How do you describe a city? What words should I use to explain the beauty, chaos, filth, the people and what more of this strange yet beautiful city. Delhi. New Delhi. This is about both.
Driving once in a while through Delhi, doing some business, eating out in some restaurants and attending a wedding party was definitely not close enough for me to say that I got to know Delhi. I am afraid of saying it now also, although I came some big steps closer.
Delhi. What a strange strange city. Obviously it is overcrowded, something I noticed while visiting
Jama Masjid, a mosque from where an enormous labyrinth of houses and markets (bazars) start. Entering from the Eastern side, we walked through small little streets, inhabited by Muslims mainly, and with quite the amount of goats, since they were preparing for some festival. They (the Muslims, not the goats) were looking at us as if we came from Mars.
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| It was a bit busy.... |
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| All nice little courtyards (and other tourists) |
To capture the feeling of these bazars, one has to have visited one. The colours, the smells, the people, the architecture (or the lack of it), it all blends together into one big chaotic (for me), yet somehow efficient big market. Everything is for sale. Everything is a bargain.
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| Everybody has electricity at least! |
Coming closer to Jama Masjid, the crowd gets denser and we decided to walk inside the mosque-complex, situated on a small hill, just high enough to overlook the surrounding area. An oasis amidst people, shops & animals (we've seen camels, goats, pigs, cows, chickens - and we did not visit a farm or a zoo...).
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| Jama Masjid |
It was time to get out of this chaos and see if we could find that one restaurant we read about somewhere on
Chandni Chowk-road. By looking at the map, I had seen this was a broad road with many restaurants and I expected it to be a nice promenade. Ok, I did not come prepared. Chandni Chowk turned out to be one of the oldest and now definitely the busiest street in Delhi. With more markets, more colors, less dirt this time, but overwhelming for sure.
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| View from Jama Masjid |
The police helped us find that nice little restaurant where we were the only guests and were stared upon while we ate our vegetarian dishes. It was good! And no, not too spicy, what the waiters and the owner and the friends of the restaurant kept on asking us...
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| Chandni Chowk |
Next day we would go cycling through Delhi. That turned out to be something even more amazing. About that adventure you'll read in my next post....
