Old Delhi

Today is Saturday, and after spending the morning in the office, I decided to go for a walk. When I leave the hotel grounds I always have to run the gauntlet of cab and auto-rickshaw drivers who are sure that I need their services. Not only that, but some will also insist that I am going the wrong way and that the best shopping is in the other direction. I think their basic assumption is that any westerner is loaded with cash and is looking for a place to leave it in a store. Shopping is not what I had in mind for the afternoon. I headed in a north-easterly direction towards Old Delhi (yes there is an Old Delhi as well as a New Delhi). As I approached the gate into Old Delhi, I was approached by another auto-rickshaw driver who warned me that I was about to enter a very dangerous place and that he would take me wherever I wanted to go and make sure I was safe. I am never sure if this is an honest concern for my well-being or if this like Luigi warning you that your business will burn down unless you buy his insurance. Anyways, I thanked him for his concern and ensured him I would be very careful, and bravely entered the old city. Wow, this really is an old city. Every building appeared to be several hundred years old, and in a very serious state of advanced decay. The streets ranged from 15 feet wide down to about 4 feet. And not another westerner in sight. I did began to wonder if the rickshaw driver might have been correct. I moved my wallet out of my back pocket and made sure to leave my iPhone tucked away out of sight. I had counted on its GPS functions to guide me through the streets, but I figured I had better try to find my own way in and out. I tried to keep to streets that were at least 10 feet wide to give some room to move, but sometimes the street would just peter out into a narrow alleyway before suddenly opening up onto a wider through way. There are virtually no cars in Old Delhi, but the streets are clogged with pedestrians, handcarts, mules, bicycles, tricycles and motor bikes. In the picture above the traffic a cart while a tricycle was heading in the opposite direction. Since the street was not wide enough for this, all traffic, pedestrian and otherwise, came to a complete halt while they sorted this out. One the bicycles was lifted aside and traffic started to flow again. Is is easy to imagine why when the British decided to make Delhi the capital of the Indian subcontinent, they left Old Delhi behind a built New Delhi as the capital. While some of the wares for sale in the shops are of recent vintage (e.g cheap Chinese made mobile phones), some of the offerings have not changed a bit. I encountered a copper smith banging away at some metal and making a new pot. A poulterer with a cage full of chickens busy was plucking the one a customer had just selected. A butcher was chopping away at some cuts of meat while a carcass hung behind him, and several bloodied goat's head were displayed on the front counter. A baker was pulling freshly baked naan, a sort of flat bread, out of an oven built in to the floor of his shop. Fruit sellers sat among their wares. I could almost imagine that life must have been much the same on the streets back in the days of the Mughal empire.
My real destination had been the Red Fort on the other side of the old city, but it was closed today. The journey itself was an even better experience.