One Year Away

Penny

We have posted 4 new pictures in the India album, enjoy!

Another train ride, this time from Agra, took us to Delhi, a city where you should expect to see everything and anything.  We stayed in the backpackers’ ghetto of Paharganj.  The area is very dirty and filled with touts.  It is not a great first impression of Delhi but it is central and convenient.  Thankfully, the rest of Delhi is much more pleasant.

We spent a total of five days in Delhi.  Two days were spent recovering from Delhi-belly while the remaining three were spent site seeing and trying to enjoy some of the great Indian food that we had missed out on the two first days.

We spent some time relaxing at Connaught Place near the fountain in Central Park with hundreds of other locals as we enjoyed the relative coolness of the evening. 

In Old Delhi, we visited the Old Fort and Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in India.  While there we also had the chance to enjoy some of the best butter chicken masala we have ever had at Moti Mahal Restaurant.  The next day we had the best jalebis (a circular, deep fried, squiggly sweet filled with sugar syrup) from Jalebis and Samosas where they specialize in what else but jalebis and samosas.  This small street side shop is constantly preparing the Indian treats fresh for customers.  For some reason, we were only allowed to buy one jalebi.  The vendor said that we could buy more after we had tasted them and liked them.  After only having one between the two of us, Joe and I were stuffed.  Although our taste buds wanted more, it was much safer to simply step away from the jalebis.

No trip to Delhi is complete without some shopping in the city’s many markets and bazaars.  If you are able to dodge the touts offering to take you to a store to buy silk saris and are able to bargain hard, Delhi has some great shopping for housewares and fabric.  We decided to splurge on some Indian spices from Roopak’s.  The store was filled with sealed containers of spices from tea masala to the spicy kashmiri curry.  But be prepared for an attack on your nostrils when you enter.  The smell was so powerful it was physically painful.

Delhi is a very large city with many different neighborhoods and you can easily spend a week visiting the many sites.  If you plan on visiting, make sure that you do it in the cooler months – i.e. not in April, May or June!