Delhi

With all of this jumping from place to place, it seems I will forever be playing "catch up" with these posts. We currently just arrived at our hotel in Shimla—apparently the largest hill station in India which was also a very popular vacation spot for the British during the Raj. Arriving here was quite an adventure which will be discussed in a later post.

The sights, sounds and stresses of Varanasi left us quite exhausted Emotionally and Physically. We after arriving to our fantastically corny and comfortable hotel "Cottage Yes Please" (which if I haven't mentioned in a previous post is made to cater towards Asian tourists...which explains the hotel's awesome name), we crashed. I showered—my first non-bucket shower since arriving in India, took a hearty nap and watched some TV. The hotel room was definitely the most comfortable living environment we've had.

Interestingly enough, Delhi, the stereotypically Indian large city known for its chaos was actually an Emotional and Physical recharge spot. I think having been in slums and immersed in poverty for over a month really took a toll on us...or at least me. After physically recharging in the hotel we decided to head to Connaught Place, a posh shopping district built by the British with upscale shops, boutiques, restaurants and bars. Of course, in a perfectly Indian style. My trusty Rough Guide guidebook, so thoughtfully given to my by my brother, Brad, recommended a restaurant called Zen which specialized in Chinese cuisine. We arrive there by autorickshaw—driven by a Sikh named Jolly who after a 15 minute conversation about how he knows "The Lonely Planet tells you not to trust the rickshaw drivers and this and that," we get in the vehicle and he proceeds to take us to his buddy's tourism center where he tries to encourage us to book taxis to Agra and do all these sorts of things. To Jolly and his agent's credit, they were both very nice and Jolly had to leave to meet his son so he didn't charge us for the ride, the agent didn't make us pay for anything and was rather friendly when we ran into him the next day. Still, I don't like the feeling of being a commodity used for people scratching each others' backs.
At Connaught Place I encountered things that were drastically different from anything I've seen in India so far: young hip and affluent Indians milling about the stores, women wearing jeans, heels and other more Western clothes while smoking cigarettes. Of course, the Indians in the slums already dress nicer than us travellers, so the hip Indians made me look like complete crap. Zen was delicious, I ordered fish and had a mojito (pronounced "mo-gieto" in India) and after that a Heineken and some delicious black current Baskin Robbins ice cream. Drinking alcohol in India, which is something I do legally in the states, was decidedly more awkward because of the attitudes towards alcohol I've seen in other parts of India. However, the people in the restaurants loved us and treated us well, despite our being dressed like dirty, sweaty travellers. Maybe it's also because we spent a combined Rs4300 on dinner and drinks.












After a slow, leisurely and comforting dining experience, we headed to a bar called Rodeo, also in Connaught Place and recommended by my Rough Guide. This place might have been the most fantastic thing I've seen in India. It was a Wild West -themed bar, complete with Indian men dressed as cowboys, a bar with saddles for stools, a saloon-style door you have to swing open to get in, and fantastically random decorations like Clint Eastwood's face. The soundtrack was also very good with notable Country hits like "In the End" by Linkin Park, some Metallica song, "Hotel California" by the Eagles, "Can I Touch You (There)?" by Michael Bolton, "Last Christmas," "Achy Breaky Heart" by Billy Ray Cyrus, Santana and others. The salsa and other food we ordered was pretty darn good for being made in a completely different culture, and better than a good number of Tex-Mex restaurants in the States. The draught beer sort of tasted like white wine though and might have been the cause of my fellow travelers' "loose motions" (a term used by Indians and jokingly by us to describe diarrhea).












We left in great moods and I was more care-free than I had ever been since we started our traveling.
The next day we woke up and after much deliberation decided what the plan was for the day. We decided to head to the India Gate area of New Delhi, an area of wide, tree-lined streets, nearby museums and is the center of India's government. We got in a richshaw and headed to the National Gallery of Contemporary Art. Our rickshaw driver was persistent in getting us to stop at a few shops in order for us to purchase overpriced merchandise that he would get a hefty cut of, but our relentless arguing paid off. I think he shut up when I said "National Gallery or no rupees!" He wasn't nearly as friendly for the rest of the trip. The gallery was awesome and I'm glad I got to at least see a little bit of art while in Delhi. There was a traveling exhibit of some German post-modern art that was Out There. Upstairs there was a somewhat small, but really beautiful collection of Contemporary Indian art. A lot of it was very much influenced by Japanese art but with an Indian twist. We then headed to the India Gate, which is at the center of this large area of roads and full of ice cream, soda vendors, Indian tourists, and of course people persistently trying to sell things to us. I'm definitely getting better at brushing them off in a friendly way and not getting as frustrated with it.
















Afterwards we took a rather long walk down one of the roads and reached the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the President's Palace and where many of the governmental ministries are located. It was quite an impressive building.













We headed back down and hailed a rickshaw back to Connaught Place to do a bit of wandering and eventually get dinner. We stopped in a Cafe Coffee Day for a coffee and a snack (the place was packed) and then moved on to some bookstores and other little shops. We actually tried to see if we could catch any Western movies, but even the fancy new theatre was showing only movies in Hindi.

Near the theatre was a restaurant that looked too kitschy to pass up. It was called PiccaDelhi, and was a London-themed restaurant that immediately reminded me of my friends Hillary and Amanda who are actually in London. It was amusing and also a bit sad because it was the worst case of Anglophilia I've seen on the trip so far and I've seen a few. Nevertheless we stopped in and got some food. They had Indian, Chinese, Italian and British food all from different kitchens appropriately labeled by the areas of London (Southall, Soho, Little Italy, etc). Our experience was also completed by a Charlie Chaplain-style mime and a double decker bus busting out of the wall that had room for a man to play favorite Western hits—such as the Beatles and of course, Hotel California.












Then we were drawn back to Rodeo where we were greeted like old friends and I ate a fajita containing beef—the first time I've had beef in a Long Time. We got back to our hotel and prepared for our next day, which we spent in Paharganj, an area with a large Bazaar full of Indian goods and of course, hippies abound.