Delhi

I made my first venture beyond Mumbai last weekend: a trip to Delhi for the First Ever Indian Grand Prix Formula One Race. I had hoped to go with a group of my Indian comrades, but things like holidays, film schedules and finances conspired to leave me unexpectedly on my own. So off I went last Thursday, the day after Diwali. 

I flew Kingfisher Air, partly because I was told to avoid Air India and also to support the Force India F1 team which is owned by Vijay Mallya, who also owns the Kingfisher Brewery, Kingfisher Airlines and (among other things) the Mendocino Brewing Company, if you happen to have a taste for Red Tail Ale. I had my boarding pass in hand from online check-in but I still had to go the desk to get it stamped, as I found out after I went through security. It's also essential that you get your carry-on luggage tag stamped by security or they will send you back when you get to the plane. I avoided that.

The flight to Delhi was uneventful except for the views of the cities below with the Diwali fireworks in full force. As I mentioned, they come from everywhere so from the air it's quite a sight. This is a little video from the window as we flew over Jaipur.

Next morning early I had a new driver and we headed for the race track. That's another story, but immediately it was apparent that Delhi has different traffic than Mumbai. In the mornings and late night it actually clears out a bit, which Mumbai never really does. There's a lot more person-powered transport in Delhi as well. Lots of bicycle rickshaws in addition to everything else. 

We had a ways to travel to get to the track so I saw a lot. We went through many markets and industrial areas. I didn't get to see any of the famous tourist spots on this trip, but I did see the new monuments in Noida, which is the area across the river in a state different than the one Delhi proper is in. This is also the area where the race was so every day we had to go six or seven miles out of our way to pay road taxes necessary to drive a Delhi car on Utter Pradesh roads. Likewise there was always a stop coming back into Delhi to pay someone something. All of this happened at random spots that didn't appear to me to have anything to do with road taxes. Just every time we crossed over we had to stop somewhere and the driver went into a building and came out a bit later, told me "Taxes." and on we went.

Noida itself is a little story. It is, as far as I know, the only part of India which is zoned. The name is a modern one, drawn from the original government plan which was called the National Organized Industrial Development Area: NOIDA, now Noida and Greater Noida. They have built these big new parks with statues of all kinds of leaders. I'm not sure what that's all about.

Monuments in Noida

Delhi is much drier and dustier than Mumbai. There was a lot of pollution from all the fireworks, plus all the regular pollution from traffic, dust, etc. Even after the sun had gone pretty high in the sky it was still a red sunset ball because of all the particulate in the air. This effect extended all the way out to the track, some 60 kilometers from the city center. Mornings and evenings were hazy to the point of fogginess. You couldn't see the other end of the track sometimes because of the haze, and none of it was moisture.

The sunrise lasts for hours in Delhi

Most of what I saw of Delhi was life on the roads. People crossing the most insanely busy four lane highways on foot, or just stopping to rest by pulling their car or motorbike off into the narrow median and taking a break. There is no more lane discipline in Delhi than there is in Mumbai, arguably less, and in the evenings traffic was just jammed all across the city. I mean just plain stuck in gridlock everywhere, only imagine the grid not as interlocking blocks but as a badly knotted mass of string where undoing the knot means sharp fingernails and a lot of patience. It's madness really. Only two-wheelers ever get anywhere and they are ubiquitous. I saw the same sight so many times I could barely believe it: a motorbike, driven by a man wearing normal clothes with a helmet and on the back, side-saddle, a woman in a sari (no helmet) with her scarf tied across her face to filter the dust along with a child, often sleeping, between her and the driver and another child, sometimes two,  between the driver and the handlebars, usually huddled together and usually sleeping on each other shoulders. This whole tableau weaves and dodges through traffic, missing other vehicles by inches, just cruising along home. I must have see this same arrangement a dozen times.

It got late coming home some nights and the driver just had to pick his way around the jams. There were these big street markets running at night which seemed very popular. These cities definitely don't shut down because it's dark and no matter how many malls they build, the street markets are where the vast majority people get their food. 

Night Market in Noida/Delhi

So it was a quick look at Delhi, not in depth. Most of my adventures were at the race track. So I am looking to return and get the tour including the monuments, the historical sights related to Gandhi and of course the Taj Mahal, which is apparently quite a long way from Delhi actually. I do look forward to all that.