Touring Old Delhi

After resting for a day, it was time to meet up with fellow Fulbright DAT Valentin Dumitrascu who arrived in Delhi from Bangalore just as I am going in the other direction. To make it special, I arranged a tour through my wonderful new Delhi By Locals friend Pradeep through Old Delhi.

Here is a view of the two little urban parks surrounding Vandana’s B&B which are nice places to chill in the urban jungle, and a worker on the next door building looking awkward as I recall all the noise I endured with the banging, welding and shouting. Walking through the neighborhood with Val, we saw the cutest puppies as mom eyed us from a short distance.

We headed out to Connaught Place and Delhi’s Central Park to meet our guides Vijay and Pradeep. I think it’s safe to say that this tour will stand out as a highlight of my time in India, from a tourist perspective. Pradeep is a master tour guide and he should be very successful with his business if he can maintain this quality level.

There was so much seen that it’s all kind of a blur. Here are some visual highlights.

In the electric tuk tuk.   Old Delhi is wildly different in the afternoon and evening than in the morning.

Spice markets, nut markets, getting out of the way of serious laborers, the entrance to the mosque.

Chillis so thick the air made you cough. Seriously this was intense. It was the way up to a most serene sunset rooftop location where we sailed kites in the wind and watched mischievous monkeys.

Best part of flying the kite was when Pradeep gave them away to some children who were hanging out there as well. A great feeling of sharing the joy of play.

This stuff was good, and the sweet was really exquisite.  YUM!

More markets at night…

Fruit vendor’s display of pomegranates and dragonfruit

Night scenes in old Delhi

Silver jewelry

Amazing thing about all these markets is the amount of competition all side by side, it means bargains for buyers but how do the competitors get along in this situation?

This didn’t look that appealing to me but then I ate the whole thing and wanted to lick my fingers (not advised in India).

Viyjay playing with his fate at the wedding market.

Decorative money necklaces and other wedding curiosities.

mouth freshener after every meal

posing outside the fancy sari shop

Entering the truly serene sikh temple, hard to find fault with their ideals and love how welcoming and generous they are.

These pots of food are massive, you can’t tell from this picture how big they are, the scale of the feeding at the temple is jaw dropping.

This is industrial size container of mango pickle

Ended an amazing tour with one more experience I was craving, pani puri and Pradeep chose a safe and great place to try it, Haldiram’s, which is supposedly available in LA but I don’t think so.