I had the car drop us off the the middle of Chandi Chowk, the main street in Old Delhi. I thought we'd just walk around and soak it in, wander to the Red Fort and Jama Masjid mosque nearby. I'm always a fan walking through the streets and getting a sense of a place.
My first sense, however, was not so positive. Filthy, crowded sidewalks, endless stalls selling complete junk, incessent touts pulling us in any direction they could. After a block or so we decided to make a beeline for the fort. At its entrance, we were intercepted by Atul, a 55 year old Nepalese man who'd left his family thirty years ago to find a better life in Delhi. He had a rickshaw, essentially a three wheeled bicycle with a seat for two on the back.
"Half hour tour through the old city" he told me. "I take you to spice market, down alley ways cars cannot go, 100 rupees." $2.50. Hard to argue with that.
For the next four hours Atul adroitly maneuvered that little rickshaw through the smallest of alleys, around cows, people, scooters, bicycles, potholes, and countless stalls selling everything under the sun. I almost felt like I'd been transported back in time. People pulling wooden carts laden with whatever they were selling: fruit, vegetables, nuts, juice, paan (more on paan later). Measuring their sales with scales, the kind where you put what you're weighing on one side and weights on the other, and balance them out.
He took us into the spice market, which was unfortunately closed that day, up abandoned stairwells to a different vantage point of the city, looking down at tiny tenements housing families of ten, fifteen people. This was India, in all it's glorious chaos.
We also saw an awesome Jain temple, down an oasis of clean and colorful houses amid the squalor. We visited the largest mosque in India, which can hold up to 25,000 worshipers. Max and I had our first lunch together in India at Karim's, a 95 year old establishment tucked away down an alley behind the mosque, where we ate with our hands.
Now that was one hell of an introduction.
My first sense, however, was not so positive. Filthy, crowded sidewalks, endless stalls selling complete junk, incessent touts pulling us in any direction they could. After a block or so we decided to make a beeline for the fort. At its entrance, we were intercepted by Atul, a 55 year old Nepalese man who'd left his family thirty years ago to find a better life in Delhi. He had a rickshaw, essentially a three wheeled bicycle with a seat for two on the back.
"Half hour tour through the old city" he told me. "I take you to spice market, down alley ways cars cannot go, 100 rupees." $2.50. Hard to argue with that.
For the next four hours Atul adroitly maneuvered that little rickshaw through the smallest of alleys, around cows, people, scooters, bicycles, potholes, and countless stalls selling everything under the sun. I almost felt like I'd been transported back in time. People pulling wooden carts laden with whatever they were selling: fruit, vegetables, nuts, juice, paan (more on paan later). Measuring their sales with scales, the kind where you put what you're weighing on one side and weights on the other, and balance them out.
He took us into the spice market, which was unfortunately closed that day, up abandoned stairwells to a different vantage point of the city, looking down at tiny tenements housing families of ten, fifteen people. This was India, in all it's glorious chaos.
We also saw an awesome Jain temple, down an oasis of clean and colorful houses amid the squalor. We visited the largest mosque in India, which can hold up to 25,000 worshipers. Max and I had our first lunch together in India at Karim's, a 95 year old establishment tucked away down an alley behind the mosque, where we ate with our hands.
Now that was one hell of an introduction.
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