Delhi Market Day

 

    I got up at the LaLit hotel early and finally somewhat caught up on sleep. Since my train for Calcutta was leaving at about 4:30 and I planned to get there two hours early (only because I hadn't figured out the Indian train system yet), I got going pretty early to see a little more of Delhi with the little time left.

    My goals were to see the Jama Masjid mosque, some of the Chandi Chowk markets, and a little of the Red Fort, Delhi's biggest and best of the old Mughal Empire forts, and Delhi's biggest attraction. 

    The LaLit Hotel was crawling with Indian soldiers who had participated in the the Republic Day parade:

     I had also taken an elevator ride in the hotel the previous day with a group of Egyptian soldiers (apparently Egypt had been given a special invite to participate in the parade for political reasons beyond me). As a highly visible representation of their county's military, they were all apparently selected for their stature: every one of them was exactly the same height, which I guessed to be about 6 ft-6 inches.

    I walked from the hotel to the Jama Masjid mosque, which was about a mile and a half away. My route took me down a lot of smaller byways and past an open air barber shop:

    My walking route also took me on a pedestrian bridge over the train tracks at local train station, about mile from the main New Delhi Station. I watched a local (commuter?) train arrive from outside the city. The disembarkation was not as chaotic as the unreserved long-distance train boarding, but you can see there is still an anything-goes approach:

    My first destination, the Jama Masjid mosque, was in Old Delhi, which is just like it sounds, the older part of the city, with narrow, meandering streets. ("New" Delhi, is the area of wide boulevards, monuments, and government buildings, a creation under British rule). The "anything goes" approach to so many things in India seems to apply to more so to the older places, where change gets piled upon change in an unplanned, haphazard way. A great example to me is in the wiring, grafted onto the old streets:

        The Jama Masjid mosque is surrounded by streets like these in Old Delhi. I was committed to walking everywhere today, and I was also committed to not taking a bicycle rickshaw. It seemed like a way to put social class structure on parade. But this was a part of town where the auto rickshaws were banned, and wouldn't fit anyway. And there were legions of bicycle rickshaw drivers earning a living here, including this one, Sajib, who keep insisting on letting his feet do my walking. 

Since we were outside the gates of the mosque, I said I had gotten to where I wanted to go. But the gate appeared to be closed, and Sajib told me to walk around to the gate on the other side. 

    He followed me the whole way, dispensing other advice, and making the case for his services in showing me the markets in the area (which happened to be destination number two on my list for today). When we got to the other gate, he said that he would wait outside to take me after I visited the mosque. The above picture was his suggestion so that I'd remember who he was. 

    The Jama Masjid mosque is another Mughal-era site, dating from the 17th century, and is huge.

 The central courtyard can hold 25,000 worshippers. Workers seemed to be preparing for a sizable fraction of that to attend today, judging by the acres of carpets they were laying down. We had to take our shoes off to enter, and be out by noon, I think for services.

    We, or at least the non-muslims like me, were barred from going inside the central building. But I didn't mind, as I had come here mainly for the chance to go up one of the minarets, the one on the left in the photo of the main mosque. The minaret has a stone circular stairway like any old castle would have, but maybe a little more cramped (two way stair traffic was a bit tight).

    And here is the conclusion of the climb:

    I had the whole top of the minaret to myself for a few minutes, then it started to get too crowded to move, so I squeezed by the ascending tourists and walked back down the 130 spiral stone stair treads to the bottom in my stockinged feet.

    I paid 100 rupees for this selfie substitute, from a guard who I thought was doing it as a favor.

    And this is a view into the main prayer hall that we were excluded from:

    I left the mosque, found my shoes, and sure enough, there was Sajib, waiting to take me in the bicycle rickshaw. It's really a ridiculous mode of transportation for much of the markets in Old Delhi: walking would be faster. But at least I had a guide, although one that I know for sure was getting a commission from some of the shops he took me to.

    Here's an example of one of the narrow, better-off walking streets:

    A tea and spice stall where I may have bought a few things:

    Sajib wanted to get a picture of me, so I got him to pose for one as well:

    I was pretty marketed-out, so I asked Sajib to drop me off at the Red Fort, about a half a mile away:

    I had been trying to get to this--really the main tourist attraction in Delhi--since I arrived, but it had been closed for Republic Day. It ended up being closed this day as well, so I took some pictures of the outside, and wandered through a fair that seemed to be connected also with Republic Day, that was still going on.

    There were floats from yesterday's parade on display, some decorated all in living flowers:

    And some dancing and music that seemed a mixture of British colonial and native roots:

    And I had a masala Coke (just a Coke with masala spice mixed in):

    I had a pizza made by a group of hospitality and hotel students, saw some more displays at the fair, and then headed over to the big New Delhi train station for me overnight train to Calcutta:

    I think I'll put the train trip in another blog entry, as it is late where I am now, and I need to go to bed...