Old Delhi

After school commute.

     I'm writing this blog entry in part because I wanted to publish the above photo. It's one of my favorites of all the pictures I've snapped in Asia. It happened at the end of a long, immensely uncomfortable couple of hours tooling around Old Delhi in the back of bicycle rickshaw. Some of the streets were more pothole than pavement. And sitting completely exposed in this kind of crazy traffic is, well, crazy. 

There was a traffic cop on duty, but he seemed to hold no sway over the drivers. 

     I didn't see the girls at first. I had my camera aimed at some other street theater. When I pulled my camera away from my face, I could see they wanted me to photograph them. They were pretty happy with themselves when I showed them the picture. 
     I had gone to Old Delhi to get the lay of the land on how to get there and what to expect because I was scheduled to meet a local blogger the next day for a street-food tour. Eating anywhere in India is pretty risky business, so I didn't want to go it alone. The people in our hotel thought it was too dangerous for me just to visit Old Delhi alone. But I felt their concerns were overblown given the fact Lonely Planet recommends seeing a couple of historic sights in the area. I didn't have any trouble. I was in reasonably good hands with the rickshaw driver I met after getting hopelessly lost on foot within minutes of coming up from the subway.

My driver, Susee.

     The biggest obstacle of the day was riding the metro to Dehli from Gurgaon, the suburb where Margaret's office is located. Actually, riding was not a problem. It was all clean and efficient by any city's mass-transit standards. It was buying a token that almost defeated me. In most of Asia that I've seen, the concept of queuing and waiting your turn has caught on. But the concept remains elusive in some places. I've gotten pretty good at defending my ground, but I wasn't prepared for the scrum at the ticket window inside the IFFCO Chowk Metro Station in Gurgaon. I began to wonder if seats were being rationed. What else could explain the panic? But no, there were plenty of good seats available and the trains came and went every five minutes or so. I saw no reason to freak out, but what do I know.
     With this dry run under my belt I was pretty jazzed for my street-food tour. Then I got an email from my guide saying she had fallen ill and wouldn't be able to make it. She said she had a bad cold. I believed her, but I couldn't help wondering if it might have been something she'd eaten while escorting other thrill-seeking gastronomes around the slums.
     Undeterred, I asked her for tips on going it alone and she sent me a map, which turned out to be pretty worthless because there are no street signs in Old Delhi, at least none that I could find on these incredibly narrow streets. 

     The most prominent signs I saw were "No Smoking" banners put up by the Jama Masjid, India's biggest mosque and one of its oldest. Hard hard to believe smoking is the biggest health concern in these parts, but maybe. 

No shoes allowed and certainly no smoking.

Of course, cats follow their own rules.

     My self-directed street-food tour was a bust. I didn't see anything that looked all that appetizing. But I did try one thing I had read about in advance -- jalebi. It's basically deep-fried dough that's soaked in a sugar syrup. Given my success with Malaysian doughnuts, I couldn't resist.

Hot work, but plenty of customers.

     I couldn't finish the jalebi. I didn't think it was possible to make a doughnut or fritter too fat soaked or too sweet for my tastes, but the jalebi defeated me. At least I didn't get sick. That wouldn't happen until we got to Agra, where we had a room with a view of the Taj Mahal. More on that next week.