India Part 2 - More Delhi

The Old Fort - yes, also huge.

My last full day here arrives too soon, still, time to visit the Akshardham Temple complex, which is, once again, vast.  Is it worth the serious queueing required to get through security?  Yeah... a shame I can't take my camera in though, much is worth recording, for instance the one hundred and forty-eight life size sculpted elephants.  Including, seven-trunked elephant deity rises from the waves as gods and demons play tug o' war with a giant snake.  Oh yes.

I escaped the crowds!

One more metro journey and I walk past the Old Fort, as big as the red one by the looks if it, don't really have time to go in even if I could find the entrance.  Then to India Gate, monument to this
countries fallen in the First World War, and also the Third Anglo-Afghan War.  What is it about Afghanistan?  Oh, and yes it is massive.  Also only visible from a distance, the surrounding parkland being closed in preparation for the Republic Day festivities a few days from now.  I'm walking through the government district now, which is rather different to the rest of the city.  There are actual pavements, and even traffic lights here, and signs warn of penalties for sounding your horn - wish they had them near my hotel.  Heading north from here, I reach the centre of the city, Connaught Square, actually a (massive of course) circle, the surrounding streets seeming for all the world to be extensions of London's Regent Street brought halfway around the world.  The park in the centre is, again, shut off for Republic Day, so I head off to my hotel, only a mile or so away, the gleaming white colonnades end after a few hundred metres, and I'm back in Delhi again, it's dark, I have to risk life and limb walking along the street amidst the rickshaws and it smells of wee...

The abandoned theatre.

Last day here, and after checking out of my (perfectly decent, though the room was a bit pokey)
hotel, I feel the need to get away from the crowds, so despite having all my stuff on my back I wander into a very extensive urban forest / park not far away.  It seems deserted after the busy streets. I do see the odd person, and also some peacocks... also the occasional bit of building poking through the undergrowth, I don't think this has always been forest - in fact at one point, feeling rather like an explorer coming across the remains of some Inca city, I discover a huge, decaying open air theatre.  I am sure there is a good reason for this.  Then it's time to head to the train station, sigh, this is really not a good place to be a pedestrian, it's not just the huge number of people but also the way you pretty much have to walk in the road, often there's no pavement, instead cars, bikes, piles of rubble right up to the surrounding buildings, but even when there is one it's generally covered with wares spilling out of the shops.  I often have to halt for some time waiting for what seems a safe time to brave the insane traffic, any gap rapidly filled by horn tooting motorcycles, or locals who, for all that they often walk with glacial slowness, seem largely happy to barge past me and out into the flow.

Monkeys!

I still get to the station in plenty of time, and my second class ticket turns out to be the highest class on the train, so right at the front (Indian railways seem to have at least eight classes, and few trains have the nominal first it seems).  Despite this being a daytime train it's a sleeper carriage, and in fact many of my fellow passengers climb up on the beds, well it is a five hour trip.  I look out of the window while the light lasts, it takes a long while to get out of Delhi, we pass people wandering around on the tracks, children playing, tiny roughly built brick shacks edging right up to the sleepers.  Then two hundred miles or so of North India, plenty of farmland, plenty of towns too, many of them odd looking places, a seemingly haphazard jumble of buildings sat on expanses of dirt and rubble, nothing like roads to be seen.  Plenty of half finished high rise blocks too, often looking like they're in the middle of nowhere - planned housing for the country's teeming millions I guess.  The sun sets, a chap comes round taking orders for food, don't know what it will be but I go for it - turns out to be a veg thali of course, would probably be nicer if it was warm.  The guy in the opposite seat, nice fellow who must be some kind of high powered businessman given he is taking this train, then straightaway flying to Singapore, tells me 'this is how we live here'.  He also says the trains here are still the way the British left them in the fifties - wish we in Britain could say the same I answer!  By way of demonstration the train arrives pretty much on time at my next city, Jaipur, more about which to come.

Photos to go with this post can be found here.