Day Seven-Part One

We woke up very early (4:15!!) to catch a 7:45 flight to New Delhi. Prasad woke up early once again to take us to the airport and we met the students there. We are travelling with 13 of my mom’s students for the rest of our stay in India because my mom is teaching a class here for the winter (which is why I came to India). Anyways, it took a long while to go through check-in and security but we caught the flight and were off. I had a masala dosa for breakfast at the airport, which was great. Masala dosa is a dosa filled with potatoes (the potatoes have all kinds of spices in them). The only problem with breakfast was that the potatoes were SO spicy that I had to stop eating them. The flight was short, and we landed in New Delhi around 945. We got our bags and met one of our guides, Johnson. Right off the bat I knew that Johnson was one cool dude. He was wearing these black sunglasses, leather shoes, and pretty cool looking jeans. Johnson is a travel guide, but he is also a yoga teacher. One of his quotes is, “Travel is my passion; yoga is my life.” We got on the bus (we have a bus now because the students are with us), which was quite nice. The one thing I didn’t like about it was that it had “TOURIST” written in gigantic letters on the front of the bus. We drove to the first sight of the day, Qutub Minar. Qutub Minar is basically a mosque complex. It was built about 700 years ago and is a mix of Hindu and Islamic architecture. Now it is ruins, but there is one minaret that still stands in great condition. It is the tallest minaret in India. On the drive to Qutub Minar, I saw a few things. The first was that I saw people smoking and selling paan, which is an addictive drug that is illegal in the south of India but legal in the north (New Delhi is in the north of India). It basically looks like a small cigarette. The second thing I saw were two girls following our bus and doing all of these different flexibility and gymnastics things that made you cringe. It was REALLY cool, so my mom decided that we would give them some money, because that is what they wanted. Well, what happened was Johnson gave the money to the drummer who was drumming for these two girls, thinking he would give it to the girls. That didn’t happen. The drummer ran off with the money and the two girls were VERY angry. So, my mom got some more money and gave it to them this time, but they just seemed to get angrier. They wanted more and more money and were shouting and moping, which I found kind of strange because I thought that they would be at least a little bit thankful. We got to Qutub Minar and it was quite the sight. The minaret is very tall and has a slight lean to it. This is because the temple is next to the minaret, and if the minaret were to fall, it would fall in the direction away from the temple. I took some great pictures at Qutub Minar and we all headed back to the tour bus after that. It was lunchtime, so we decided that we would go to Subway to get a quick lunch before the rest of the sights of the day. The bus had to park pretty far away from Subway because it is very hard to find parking for a bus around Delhi. It wasn’t that long a walk, but we did have to cross the street, which was AWESOME. I really love crossing the street here because it is exhilarating and dangerous. We arrived at Subway, which was located in one of the back streets of Delhi. Right as we got in my mom realized that we couldn’t eat the food because it would be dangerous. You have to be very careful about eating fruits and veggies in India (especially Delhi) because the water is not the same as in America and you can get very sick from it. That water is often used to wash fruits and veggies, which makes them dangerous. So now we were stuck because there weren’t really any other great and quick restaurants around and we needed to hurry. Right across the street from Subway we came across a place called Pizza Square, which as the name implies serves square pizzas. I was later told that pizza square was an Indian chain and that they try very hard to differentiate themselves from Pizza Hut. Not knowing that Pizza Square was a chain, I found it quite sketchy. There were no tables and the people took your order out of a small window and made the pizzas in a tiny little room. While we were waiting for our pizza, small girls kept on coming up to us asking for money. We had learned our lesson by now from the gymnastics girls and just ignored them. It may sound mean doing something like that, but if you give one girl money then you have to give every girl money and no amount of money is enough. Every time I ignore or decline a request for money it saddens me, but I know that is what you have to do. We got out pizza and headed back to the bus to go to our next destination, Humayun’s tomb. This journal is getting long so I’m going to split it into two parts. In my opinion, the second part of the day was more interesting than the first! J.

Traffic in New Delhi:

Qutub Minar:

Pizza Square: