Thursday 18/01/18
OUR STORIES for our stay in
Delhi - Wednesday (Blog) / Thursday (Blog)
/ Friday (Blog)
(LAST INDIA POST IS HERE (12/April/18 - Amritsar and wrap-up of India Trip)
click on images for enlargement and correct orientation
Friday, 19/1/18
I’m writing waiting for brekkie at the Diamond Restaurant. It’s “roll out of bed and there you are” …..almost. Yesterday we went for a ride on the wild side. Bought a 3 day tourist card for the metro. The Delhi metro is really modern, fast and efficient. Women get offered seats, they line up separately for the extensive (just like the airport) security check. And the line is much much shorter. Less women travelling...it looks like it in the metro. There is even a special area on the platform marked “Women only".
Our first stop was Connaught Place, a large roundabout with high end restaurants, shops and hotels. We bought a high end coffee were a little unimpressed and then tried to find the Red Fort by metro. We were unsuccessful and walked for quite a while through some pretty dodgy areas. There was a bunch of public hospitals in this area. Then we decided to do some random rides and got off at a station north of Vishwadidyalaya 😏😀. There the housing was quite different, three story buildings surrounding a park. A nice place to live and quite a contrast.
I’m writing waiting for brekkie at the Diamond Restaurant. It’s “roll out of bed and there you are” …..almost. Yesterday we went for a ride on the wild side. Bought a 3 day tourist card for the metro. The Delhi metro is really modern, fast and efficient. Women get offered seats, they line up separately for the extensive (just like the airport) security check. And the line is much much shorter. Less women travelling...it looks like it in the metro. There is even a special area on the platform marked “Women only".
Our first stop was Connaught Place, a large roundabout with high end restaurants, shops and hotels. We bought a high end coffee were a little unimpressed and then tried to find the Red Fort by metro. We were unsuccessful and walked for quite a while through some pretty dodgy areas. There was a bunch of public hospitals in this area. Then we decided to do some random rides and got off at a station north of Vishwadidyalaya 😏😀. There the housing was quite different, three story buildings surrounding a park. A nice place to live and quite a contrast.
Think we slept about five, maybe six hours last
night. ‘We’ll come and take a nap’, we promised ourselves when we began to
rattle around our room at six am. It is now seven pm and naps never came our
way today, nevertheless, we felt good and spent the day getting lost and
enjoying it all. At our new found great breakfast place we spent a couple of
hours on our computers/smart devices while sipping chia and eating a wonderful
breakfast; eight am until past ten. Much more pleasant than our room to write
and to connect with the great world out there; not that the twenty-five million
(give or take a couple of dozen) people in our immediate vicinity are not
enough to connect with; we do connect with them though in a bumping into a
crowded type of way. Back in our room we managed to fiddle and fart around for
a couple of hours with several serious attempts at trying to get out the door.
Perhaps we are just old, maybe too thingy about what we want to wear (after all
we have about two changes of clothes as we packed very little, other than all
that we thought we would need: mosquito net, blowup mattresses because we
thought the beds would be too hard (not so, so far), mesh to lock around our
bags on trains, camera gear, one fifteen inch computer – must get that size and
weight down, extra shoes, books, some stuff to give away, and not much to wear.
Of course, that opens the door, if not the overfilled full of crap we may never
use suitcases, for Narda’s new Indian clothing. Not to worry, finally out the
door, tried to follow our GPS but ended up taking a tuk
tuk to Connaught Place, not sure why, I think someone
recommended it to us. Ended up in a rather longish conversation about Muslims
with a Muslim man, the second in two days. Both from Kashmir and both with houseboats
to rent. I think we may go there for a week and stay on a houseboat at the end
of our trip in mid-April.
Had coffee at some alleged trendy Starbucks-like
place, not a nice place, people too precious, all thinking they were trendy, we
much prefer our area, which is just happy people getting through their life. We
bought a three-day visitor metro pass for about eight bucks and rode around.
I
think there were more police than students. After all, kids wanting another bus
can get quite unruly.
We got back on the train, not out of fear of
police and college students, but because there was a long line waiting to get
onto the metro. They have airport security things to go through here (they have
it our hotel too) and I show my special card as I unbutton my shirt, to show my
defibrillator /pace maker, then I get to go around and get checked
individually. Hey, I have been lifting weights and going to they gym for many
years, maybe a bit of a vain Leo, but at 70 I can show off a bit.
That’s it. On and off at a few more shops; a great
lunch; absolutely love Indian food. We try different things each time. we are
looking at taking a cooking class later this week; so
come to our home when we get back and we will cook great stuff for you.
The
Cow Thing
Narda, the wise, asked an intriguing question
yesterday which got me to thinking about it sometime around two am when the
world around us was asleep.
If
I had to be a cow, would I rather be a cow in Australia living with clean air
and green grass and roaming about a groovy open paddock or a cow in Delhi with
the air not so good and playing bumper tag with the traffic and eating garbage?
After deep reflection using these thoughts
I think I sided with the cows of India. Here is why;
The cows of Australia with their clean
air, water, wide open terrain get to produce their grass-fed butter and lots of
milk for humans but at what cost? Life is short and swift for an Australian
cow. Luxury living, then it is off to the slaughter house for wayward cows to
feed the meat eaters who enjoy chunks of karma in their stew. A cow lives only
a couple of years – a cow giving birth has it worse with their calf being taken
away soon after birth, so we can have their milk.
Cows in India have freedom. They may push
a rider off her motor scooter and tourists get stepped on, but they do what they
wish. I have seen cows in the middle of a busy street contently looking about
for quite sometime as everyone finds a way past them. I have seen cows laying
in the middle of the road having a bit of a rest with no one stressed. Can you
imagine that in NYC? Some irate driver would shoot the cow in a road-rage
moment.
There seems to be a lot of food around the
place and once they find their way through Delhi perhaps they will make it to
the Ganges for a bit of a bath later in life. I am sure some enlightened person
would tell us how Australian cows are reincarnated souls who had worked hard in
past lives but had done something not too correct, so they get luxury then
death whereas Indian cows are reincarnated souls working off stuff. As I am not
believing in reincarnation at the current time I don’t really have an opinion.
Below is an enlightened cow giving me a bit of an eye.
