Upon returning to my hotel after my short stint outdoors, I passed the rest of the evening watching TV. Although my TV was plasma, it had a giant plastering of goop running diagonally down from the top left-hand corner. I tried to ignore it. I wasn't going to try to clean it off anyway. The thing that did bother me about the TV was the content.
I swear, approximately 85 percent of the ads on TV that night were about skin lightening lotions and potions. *I'll post some images later*. Everyone from the makers of Dove to Ponds market these products to Indian women. I can't imagine the poor self esteem I would have if I lived in India and had non-Caucasian looking skin. Of course all of the models in the ads are Indian women who look sort of Caucasian. It's as if they are as taunting the general population with their strange but coveted look. I guess this 'faux light' look is possible - if you have the money to waste on chemicals that will lighten your skin but harm your health. Women everywhere seem to pay a high price for beauty. To a lesser extent, even Indian men are exposed to this quest for whiteness. There's a product called 'fair and lovely' aimed at men. I laughed when I first saw the bottle. Sorry.
Okay, enough of my rant. On to the describing the adventures of the day:
After my 3 minute adventure the night before, I was determined to see some of Delhi before meeting up with my tour. After carting my bags to the tour's hotel starting point, I set off to see Connaught Place. My roommate for the trip joined me on my outing. Looking back, I should have gone alone, but oh well.
Connaught Place was created by the British and its Georgian architecture was modeled after the Royal Crescent in Bath, England. This description was pretty much what I read in my guidebook, so I decided it would be a great place to travel to first. Unfortunately, I didn't read the description on the Wikipedia website, "Unfortunately during the late 2000s, Connaught Place may have lost its old glory but the charm of the market still works on the people". Since we never got to see the market, I can't say I left holding Connaught Place in high esteem.
Picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:View_from_rotating_restaurant.jpg
Getting to Connaught Place was an adventure in itself. I wanted to take the new Delhi metro system (which is supposed to be amazing) but a taxi driver kept pestering us to take his rickshaw instead. I finally caved and said "'What the hell'. Even if he charges us more than the original price, it will be part of the experience". He ended up keeping his end of the bargain; however, he did take a long route and tried hard to convince us to stop at some bazaar since "all the stores were closed on Saturday afternoon" (which is actually bullshit). I stood firm though and we did make it our destination. We probably should have gone to the bazaar instead...
Upon arriving at the inner most circle, my roommate and I were left wondering, "this is it??". The gardens I imagined in my head were replaced by a large section of grass and a sorry scattering of bushes. The storefronts, which may have looked magnificent in the past, looked shabby and worn. Whatever, that's fine. Part of the experience. No need to judge.
What did drive me crazy was our extended search for a working ATM. My roommate needed money and we set out to find an ATM. It look over an hour (maybe more - no exaggeration) to find one. Most were either 'out of service', or didn't accept her type of card. To add to the experience, a random 20 year old guy decided to be our informal tour guide, saying he was just a student and liked meeting new people and didn't want any money. Yeah right, they all say that. Really, I'm not jaded. That is a common line. I've experienced a few of these informal tours along the way, despite repeated protests.
So, the guide led us all around the circle. Into the outer circle, back into the inner circle. We'd try to lose him but he'd continually turn up. We ended up spending the entire morning looking for a stupid ATM. It got to the point where we had to settle on McDonalds for lunch. We didn't have time to search out a tourist-friendly restaurant.
I thought I would be safe with the Veggie Burger. Wrong. It turned out to be a deep fried patty with bits of peas and random vegetables inside. My tummy wasn't too happy later.
The true highlight of Connaught Place was attempting to cross the street. There are few rules of the road whatsoever here. It is very difficult for a sane person to walk head first into a steady stream of traffic. My roommate and I held hands tightly and prayed no one would hit us. Apparently the rule is that pedestrians should walk at a slower/steadier pace instead of running. The reason is that if you run, even if you think you will get across faster, drivers will have a harder time gauging where you will go and thus, will be more likely to hit you. Even the buses don't slow down.
It was at this point that I was glad that I was meeting up with an organized tour. I couldn't imagine trying to navigate Delhi's streets alone while desperately trying to fend off scammers spotting easy prey.
As for the rest of the tour of Delhi - it was hugely sanitized. If I saw the real Delhi in the morning, I saw the scrubbed down version in the afternoon. We traveled by air conditioned luxury mini-van to all of the sites (since the rest of the girls didn't want to take public transportation). We ended up visiting the Lotus Temple (at my request), and the oldest mosque - Jama Masjid. I can't remember if we saw anything else. The experience wasn't exactly memorable, although the mosque and Baha'i temple were beautiful.
Picture: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/LotusDelhi.jpg
NB: My irritation at my travel companions continued over the course of the trip, as they (3 other women) always seemed to choose the more expensive luxury transportation option over the 'free' public transportation option. In my opinion trying the local food and local transportation are part of the experience. Then again, they all switched to pasta, pizza and Chinese food after the first week...
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