December in India, Part 1

Last December, Yeongmi and I visited India.  This was our first trip there and we spent our ten or so days in the "Golden Triangle" area of Delhi, Agra and Jaipur.  Here is a rather belated report on the trip.

December 15 and 16 - Flight to Delhi
Yeongmi and I left for India on the morning of December 15th.  We flew first to New York Kennedy airport where we had a four-hour layover waiting for our flight to Paris.  The trip from New York to Paris was memorable only for being crammed to the gills with New Yorkers and Parisians.  Ambien makes the rest of the flight only a blur.  We had two hours in Paris which we spent mostly going from our arrival gate to the departure gate.  The flight from Paris to Delhi took eight hours and took us directly over Prague, over the Black Sea and Crimean Peninsula, over Afghanistan and into India.

We arrived at the airport in Delhi at 11:10 p.m. Delhi time and after making our way through customs and immigration and getting some cash at the ATM we met the driver from our hotel who was there to pick us up.  It took 30 - 45 minutes to drive from the airport into Karl Bagh where the hotel was.  There was a surprising amount of traffic on the streets, mostly trucks and lorries that are not allowed to be in the city during regular daylight hours.

First Photo in India

 

Car Ride from the Airport to the Hotel

Door-to-door it was about 32 hours of travel.  We slept a bit that night /morning, but headed out around 10 a.m. local time to do some sightseeing.


December 17 - Touring Old Delhi
Our first task was getting more money since we were off by a power of ten when withdrawing from the ATM at the airport.  (I blame jet lag).  We took the metro a few stops from Karol Bagh to Rajiv Chowk (formerly and still called Connaught Plac).  We found an ATM there and had a nice lunch of Palak Paneer and Rogan Josh.

Karol Bagh Metro Station

First Meal in India

From here we rode the metro to the Chawri Bazaar station and walked through Old Delhi to the Jama Masjid, the main mosque.

Streets of Old Delhi

We toured the grounds of the mosque entering from the south and exiting to the east through the Meena Bazaar.

At Jama Masjid

Yeongmi at the Mosque

Kerk at the Mosque

View Looking East from Jama Masjid at Meena Bazaar

 From here we wandered over to the Red Fort and took a tour.  It was getting late in the day at this point and it was mid-December when the days are rather short, so we spent only and hour or so here.

First Gate to the Red Fort

Entrance to the Red Fort in Old Delhi

Diwan-i-Aam, the Public Audience Hall at the Red Fort.

From here we walked westward along Chandni Chowk and eventually found the Chandni Chowk metro station which was back away from the road on the north side.  By this time it was dusk and it turned out to be rush hour.  We made it easily to Rajiv Chowk, but waited 40 minutes or more there to change trains.  The commuters were packed at least as tight as sardines in a can.  We were a bit worried we would not be able to make it to the exit when we came to our stop in Karol Bagh, but enough people got off on the stops before that to make it possible.

We made some good friends while waiting in the queue.  That was one nice facet of traveling in India for us at least; many people spoke very good English and we had a nice conversation with a group of coworkers who were all headed home together.

We had dinner that night in our hotel, which turned out to have a very good restaurant.  We never had a bad meal in India and we had some really, really good ones!  This night it was Butter Chicken, Chicken Pakora, and Garlic Naan.

Dinner at the Hotel

Yum!