Four Days in Delhi: Part 2

The tour bus is a time portal to 1978. There is an abundance of fake wood paneling, synthetic carpeting and knobs and buttons that don’t work. Despite my instincts, I refrain from making a judgment about the coming tour based on the vehicle. I have my fingers crossed the guide will be a magical repository of knowledge about the seven cities of Delhi. I’m imagining him as an old, gray-haired Indian storyteller who has traded an audience of hookah-smoking locals for busses of tourists. With the first crack of the intercom my hopes are dashed.

The noise directed at the 20 of us on the bus is technically English but even that description might be kind. I turn my attention away from a guy peeing on the wall just outside the bus to get a good look at our guide. He is middle aged, short, a little plump and seems genuinely irritated he has to narrate our tour. He is wearing a plaid fedora, a bushy mustache, a Cosby sweater, gray slacks and white tennis shoes. His English is suspect but the ancient intercom system makes everything he says almost completely unintelligible. He is well aware no one can hear or understand what he is saying but he simply doesn’t give a damn.

What I’m able to pick out from his mumbling and from the schedule of the tour is that the morning will be spent in New Delhi and the afternoon is reserved for the old city. At first I’m slightly amused by the guide but after ten minutes of driving I find myself disgusted with the prospects for the day. As we head to our first stop, a large but relatively new temple blessed by Gandhi, we drive down an impressive avenue lined with embassies. The narration from the front of the bus is as follows: “US embassy,” pause, “Canadian embassy,” pause, “Malaysian embassy,” pause, “Chinese embassy,” longer pause, “Pakistan embassy,” followed by a guttural throat clearing noise and silence. I turn to Chetan, who is sitting to my right across the aisle, and with a sorrowful headshake say, “riveting stuff.”

The first stop at a completely forgettable temple flies past. I take a few pictures, dodge postcard sellers and return to the bus. As I wait for the rest of the group to return, I notice several motorists weave through traffic, pull over as they come upon the temple, say a few prayers and keep moving. It’s a wonderfully Indian scene.

Back on our motor chariot we head for the Qutub Minar, a nearly 240 foot brick and sandstone minaret built by an Afghan conqueror at the end of the 12th century. The tower was erected as a victory monument in the midst of the ruins of a destroyed Hindu temple complex. It is massive, beautiful and awe inspiring.

Our guide gives us 30 minutes to explore the tower and ruins littered around its base. A comically short amount of time for the site but I duck in and out of crumbling mosques, through Indo-Saracen arches and around intricately carved pillars, repurposed from the Hindu temples once the heart of a destroyed city. The 30 minutes fly by. Back on the bus we head for an unannounced stop.

After 20 minutes of battling rush-hour traffic we pull into a gravel parking lot of a handicrafts emporium. Our disgruntled guide announces we have 45 minutes to shop. I immediately pull out my map of Delhi, pick out a few sites I’m dying to see, announce to Chetan we are leaving the tour and begin my hunt for a rickshaw. As we leave the tour behind, I grab one last glimpse of our guide. He is sitting on a broken down chair outside the Emporium, staring at nothing, irritated as ever.

Four Days in Delhi: Part 1

We are already running late. Our Gurkha driver, Seeray, flies down the highway in our Ford into the center of the city, his face almost completely covered by a winding scarf. It’s winter in Delhi and barely 50 degrees. The car windshield is completely fogged up but we shoot forward, split two rickshaws and scream into the parking lot of the city Tourist Department which also happens to double as the city’s sprawling flower market.

Seeray, a sergeant in the 10th Ghurka Rifles and personal attendant to a Brigadier General, throws the car into park and beckons us forward into the maze of flower peddlers. He is thick and noticeably athletic. While immensely kind to us he is precisely the type of soldier no man wants to meet in the field. He is under strict orders to get us to the tourist office by 7:45 am sharp to ensure we are on time for our 8:00 am bus tour. Failure is not an option.

He moves exceptionally fast through the single-file paths of the market, jumping over flowers, dodging lazy buyers sipping chai and reversing direction when need be to reroute around human roadblocks. He is in front, followed by my impossibly close friend Chetan, – the nephew of the Brigadier General – me and then Chetan’s girlfriend Rosie.

When cutting through the pushy tangle of the flower market proves impossible, Seeray leads us out to the edge of the road in an attempt to circumvent the mess and get us to our destination. As we move down the street, motor bikes and rickshaws fly past inches to our left. I keep edging further out into the street trying to use my body as a shield for Rosie as we push forward. My plan doesn’t work. A motorbike flies past me and a side-view mirror clips her shoulder. She grunts, assures me she’s okay and we keep moving.