New Delhi - at last

 Well, what can I say? So much I could tell you but I will try to keep it brief.

I had a good sleep at my hotel tucked away in a suburban lane which home to various industries and many street sleepers who I watched washing their teeth and doing their washing in the street.  Clothes were strung along the myriad of cables, power and otherwise, that took up most of the space along building frontages and between the slanting powerlines.

The eating facilities at the hotel were non existent so I started my day without coffee, that did not bode well, but with the help of an uber found my way to the meeting point for my tour of the slums, the second largest slums in the Northern Hemisphere.  I was a little sceptical about where I was going and didn’t want to think that I was just going for a nosey without helping the people that lived there. I was reassured that some of the proceeds of my fare did go towards helping the community and this was reinforced by the way the tour guides were respected by the locals. 

Waiting for the tour guides I watched the people coming and going from the train station.  Close by were government departments and most of these people were headed there, immaculately dressed with women in anything from jeans and t.shirt to beautiful saris.  Fascinating.  

Watching the traffic was even more fascinating.  Four lanes of traffic fitting in to two lanes.  Tuktuk competing with bicycle carriages, busses, motor cycles and cars meant lots of tooting and screaming  a fight broke out between the drivers of new battery operated tuktuk and the traditional petrol jobs.  The electric jobs were taking business away from the traditional ones so there was lots of screaming, pushing and shoving and fist shaking.  The tooting never stopped and there were so many near misses I gave up counting.

The tour had two local lads as leaders, a mate of theirs, myself and three very rude elderly men who spent the whole time with their long camera lenses right in peoples faces or in doorways to peoples homes. Neither spoke to any of us and they were quite awful, not listening to any of the tour narrative and wandering off doing their own thing.  Just horrible. 

Anyway, the tour took us to an area between two sets of railway lines where some homes had been set up under a motorway overpass. When I say homes I don’t mean homes in our sense but just rooms where everyone slept and maintained by the women of the house. Mostly spotless but without electricity, furniture, water etc. We didn't see an ablution block but there were no bathroom/toilet facilities in the rooms. 

A few stalls were set up around the area and these sold anything from fresh veg to plastic stuff. Some sold cooked food and we were treated to cooked kumara tossed in spices. It was delicious. 

We stopped every now and then to watch workers plying their trade; one guy surrounded by piles of glass which he was breaking up then meticulously cleaning each piece to sell it. Many of the people living in the slums do not have regular work so earn a living by recycling items they find on the streets and making something out of them. 

Kids swarmed us wherever we went, some cheeky and persistent wanting selfies, others casually joining the throngs and running round. Most of them do not go to school.  Although schooling is free the families cannot afford uniforms, books, transport to the schools so the kids just hang out in the slums. So sad. 

Describing the conditions of the slum is impossible, insurmountable piles of rubbish everywhere, sewerage running through the paths were people walked, smells came out of everywhere, and water dripped from pipes overhead.  It was gross.

We stopped for chai made from hot milk and tea and our guides bought us some. I couldn't refuse and managed a few sips but once I saw that skin forming on the milk that was it. 

We later watched chapati being made. A production line of people making the dough, making the dough into balls, flattening it and then shaping pizza dough style before cooking on the hot plate. In another room two youngsters packed the cooked chapatti into packets which would be sold around town. All this is airless dark rooms. But the chapati were delicious. 

A young man, with vibrant red hair, led a team of guys who made drums joined us for a bit. He was happy in that he sold a drum to one of our guides.  

Further in we crossed the train lines watching women labouring on the tracks, immaculately dressed in their saris and doing strenuous manual labour. It didn't seem to fit.  The murkiness of the photo shows how thick the smog was.  You could smell it in the air and even talking became difficult.  

The tour over my guides dropped me off at Connaught Square, a round really with three concentric circles of roads mainly with western type shops and restaurants with a local market thrown in.

It was here that I had my first Indian meal, not the traditional stuff I had expected but an Indian meal with a western touch.  A delicious butter chicken kebab with a side of salsa.  Very tasty but not what I came here for.  I was desperate for coffee but this place didn’t do coffee and sadly then ended up at Starbucks for what was possibly the worst coffee I had ever had a single sip of.  The cost was $6.00

A short time later I stumbled across a bazaar and bought a couple of items of clothing.  A top that I found didn’t fit and a pair of trou that did fit.  Both for the sum of $6.00 the same as the disgusting Starbucks coffee I had.  

Tired from walking all day and exhausted by the never ending number of people trying to chat or sell me something I asked a lady to help me get a tuk tuk back to the hotel.  

Today didn’t excite me too much, I was hot and tired and the slums saddened me so much that it knocked me a bit. I hope tomorrow sees me with my usual travel passion.   

Although the hotel is a dump the bed was comfortable and by 5pm I had fallen asleep  I woke at 7am this morning.