DAY 4 - Old Delhi

danielcarney
Mar 31, 2016
3 min read

Updated: Oct 26, 2020

A solid nights slept after the Cricket last night.

That's right, Cricket! We watched T20 England vs NZ - Sad to say England beat them.

Today we enjoyed our final Indian breakfast with chai tea more sambar and vegetarian something delicious. Can't remember so we will call it that.

Re-packed and Aaron needed to do a backup. Most will understand this if you don't its ok somethings are best left unexplained.

9 am was our pick up time and another 3 hour drive to Delhi with Sanjay.

Once we arrived, we were to be met in the city by our new local guide 'Harsht' to take us around the old part of Delhi, also known as 'Old Delhi' Duh!

First stop was a rickshaw down the main market road. That was interesting, our seat belt was our foot on the driver's back, and our armrest was either an armrest with an injury, or no armrest and no bandages.

We road for about 20 mins, the sights the smells the traffic was such a unique experience it was enough to wow all the senses.

After we took a short walk through the spice markets, red chilli section made our pores sweat and noses tingle.

It was great ducking and weaving through the loads of people all trying to sell all the same things, how do you compete with someone who is selling the same thing as the person next to you?

The answer is GOOD SERVICE! - The ones who say; hello, look at you, welcome you in and even make physical contact like a handshake or pat on the shoulder or back.

They got me interested even though I wasn't there to buy.

We moved on from here to the Sikh Temple, one of the strangest form of religion's I have ever seen they worship knowledge? Not sure I quite understood the guide, but the worshippers were touching just about everything as acceptance of knowledge or wisdom. We had to wash our hands, shake water on ourselves to show cleansing. Only one problem there, the tap didn't work.

We washed our feet and walked into the temple which seemed to be like an odd folk music festival, where people came to sit in the air conditioning listening to loud music and at the end of it get a free feed.

Anyone could eat religion aside; they feed up to 20,000 people a day at this particular temple. Some temples in the north are 130,000 people a day.

By feed I mean a few veggies and a slop of gruel looking consistency which was a mixture of sugar, wheat flour and butter.

They all come to sit in line with each other and no discrimination of men, women, religion or age.

It was a very different experience to most I have experienced, but we enjoyed it.

We made our way to the final stop, the Mosque. It was the most expensive part of the day 300 rupees (about AUD 5.80) to take in a camera in, and we were there for about five mins.