Delhi

Delhi,

Now before I begin to talk about Delhi or the rest of India I have to add that this is MY experience and ONLY my experience. What i have learned especially with what i took out Delhi is that it’s your personal experiences that really shape how you feel about a place. For me, getting a chance to see Delhi more like a local than a tourist, while having some inside information, really added to the experience.

I arrived in Delhi and picked up a prepaid cab to my new friend Kerrun’s apartment. At this point I had never met him but he is a friend of a friend whom I have been traveling with up to this point (Cristina). For me this was the thing I had been waiting for, a real experience in eating, seeing, and learning about Indian Cuisine. No longer than 30min. after arriving at his apartment and getting to meet back up with Cristina we hoped into a cab and headed to Old Delhi, the one place I was really looking forward to. I really was excited to see windy narrow streets mobbed with people, and filled with interesting smells and tastes (no sarcasm at all, the packed streets of Old Delhi was on the top of my list of places to see).
On arrival we hopped into a pedal rickshaw (thanks to Kerrun speaking Hindi) and down the narrow passageways we went. Past street vendors frying up all kinds of foods, bags filled with spices of all kinds, people selling any and everything you can imagine, people sleeping in the streets, pissing in the streets, living in the streets, Old Delhi is a sight to see. For me it was a pretty awesome day, but as I said it’s the personal experiences that make an overall difference in how you feel about a place.
Kerrun took me around the city the next day and we did some local things, I saw where his mother worked, places he goes, and restaurants he eats in. It was nice to not be afraid of what I was ordering, not just because of not knowing what it was but also because in India I was always on guard of weather or not it was safe for me to eat. Getting a chance to branch out with someone to guide me on eating and ordering was amazing.
Over all it was the good feeling of having someone with me who was easy to get along with and so willing to help me accomplish what I wanted to learn. Kerrun brought me into a 3 star hotel and actually hooked me up with one of the Chefs whom I got to shoot the shit with, discuss Indian basics, and get a lot of questions answered that still boggled my mind. It was an experience that I was very grateful for.

Overall I really liked Delhi, but I can see how I may be singing a different tune if I hadn’t had such a good guide and accommodating host. I can see how many tourists fall into the trap of being turned off by the city, in comparison to Mumbai, Delhi is a much cleaner city (but that is in comparison to the filthiest place I have ever been), there is a bit more organization to it, but over all it is a big Indian city, dirty, populated and unless prepared, very easy to be overwhelmed by.