Day One: Delhi

Delhi takes turns at being fascinating and infuriating.

With a couple of days before I join a tour group, I endeavour to see the sights of Delhi not on the itinerary, in particular, the remains of the Mughal complex of Qutb Minar, 10k south of Paharganj where I’m roosting. There is a local bus that goes there but at New Delhi Station ‘helpful’ touts recommend I stick with the safer, more comfortable, more direct, tourist bus, and they point me in the direction of Connaught Place. I insist on walking against their preference. This leaves me at the mercy of further ‘helpful’ guides. An English student leads me not to the bus stop but to a tourist agency. He also suggests I start dressing like an Indian to avoid paying tourist rates.

I am amused to spend my first morning in Delhi letting the city have its way with me, being led by people I believe are genuinely out to help me. I don’t catch the bus in the end but succumb to the first offer of a cup of tea and strike a deal to hire a car for the day. Sanjeev at Nexus Tours (slogan: We elecit the world clase) is surprised that I am staying in Paharganj as I do not strike him as either a hippy or a druggist.

Booking the car is more economical for seeing far-out Qutb Minar, but also a loop of other distant sights. My driver, Kemal, has modest English but gets me through the chaotic traffic in one piece. In the afternoon, I’m roasting in the back, breathing in the sauna heat and glistening in a sheen of sweat.

Jama Masjid

The first port of call is India’s largest mosque, the Jama Masjid. Prior to Friday midday prayers, the vast courtyard is being covered in rugs, facing west, as we’re not East of Mecca. Erected between 1644 and 1658, under the rule of Shah Jahan (who also gave India the Taj Mahal), the mosque has scale and symmetry but little detailing. The eastern veranda offers shade for pilgrims and a fine view towards Shah Jahan’s other major Delhi monument, the Red Fort. Hawks circle the minarets, perhaps marking the pigeons that gather for the seed swept into a square.

Encumbered by a restrictive skirt I have to cover my bare ankles, I make one circuit of the courtyard then leave before the muezzin calls. The roads are treacherous with weaving motorbikes, auto-rickshaws and buses, honking and beeping. The tour offers some respite to this, with several oases of tranquility, such as our next stop, the Raj Ghat. This landscaped park contains memorials on the spots where Gandhi’s Mahatma, Indira and Rajiv, plus Jawaharlal Nehru were cremated. Piped mellow music feeds over the Mahatma garden, disturbed somewhat by the wheeze of the neighbouring power station. Mynahs and stripy ground squirrels hop across the manicured lawns.

Nearby is the Gandhi Memorial Museum, a worthy, chronological exhibition of the Mahatma’s life and beliefs of passive resistance. The humble bamboo staff he used on his famous Salt March is on display along with his few personal artifacts. These include, rather ghoulishly, his final dentures, the blood-stained cloth he wore when he was assassinated in 1948 and one of the bullets used.

I pause for a cup of masala tea (a milky brew made fragrant with cardomom) in the car park.

Bahai Temple

Next stop, the lotus-shaped Bahai Temple. The Bahai faith originated in Persia. It is inclusive to all religions and invites all to join in contemplation within its light and airy hall. The temple is pleasantly surrounded by turquoise pools, lawns and frang-y-pani trees and seems a mile away from the bustle and sweat of the city.
On to my main destination, the complex at Qutb Minar.

The number of tour coaches, snack and souvenir stalls mark this as a major tourist destination, and quite rightly. 50 Indian schoolgirls march in and wave at the tourists, cameras ready. Right of the entrance is a small mosque and a barely visited square. The wall carving are mutilated by graffiti in places.

Qutb Minar

The Qutb Minar is a 72-metre tower built of a patchwork of sandstone and marble. It marks the Mughal defeat of the Hindus in northern India in 1193. A second planned tower, twice the height of the first was never completed. This one-storey mass of bricks is merely a roost for squabbling green parrots. Beneath the Qutb Minar stands India’s first mosque, the Quwwat-al-Islam. I gaze up at the calligraphy as a storm approaches. The red sandstone pillars and archways outside glow in the remaining sun. I just make it back to my driver before the torrent arrives.

The road soon turns to a ford. Motorcyclists shelter under an overpass, blocking one lane. I decline the offer of a craft market to avoid the obligatory sales pressure and move on to the Indira Gandhi Museum in her former home, Birla House. The exhibition is fairly moving, as it preserves several of her rooms (drawing room, dining room and study) as she left them and many personal items are on show, such as the photos of family she kept in her wallet, sunglasses and schoolgirl drawings.

A family usher me aside so they can pose, grinning, in front of Indira’s bloody sari. The garden path that leads to where she was stabbed by her Sikh guard is now covered in crystal. Her son, Rajiv, has two rooms to himself. His last garments are also on display, but these are burnt rags, salvaged in the aftermath of a bomb left by Sri Lankan terrorists.

India Gate

We drive back along the RajPath, taking in the war memorial, India Gate and Ministries of Defence and Finance which flank the wide approach to the President’s House (once home to the British Viceroy).

The tour is over and I’m happy to shower away the salt from my eyelids, lie down and plan my first meal since breakfast.

I head to the recommended Chor Bizarre restaurant beyond the train station. I regret my decision to walk again. The threat of having my sandaled feet crushed by swerving bicycles and rickshaws is constant. Directions are hard to follow and after half an hour I fail to find the restaurant. Trudging back frustrated, I see the chaos and grime, the passage of hundreds of men, dragging their belongings on carts, the animals foraging in the puddles and heaps of garbage and it strikes me as an end-of-the-world tableau.
I finally reach home, as it is, on the Main Bazaar and enter the Gem Restaurant, which advertises its whisky prices on the door. I am led to a table opposite two hulking guys. One is a Canadian ex-wrestler who tried to persuade me to write a book about his Irish mafia friend. The other is a clearly disturbed and potential violent Scouser. I scoff my thali leave.

Sleep is disturbed at 2am by someone digging through concrete outside.

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