India pt. 1 - Delhi

It's Sunday afternoon here in Hong Kong and we've just returned from our week-long trip through Rajasthan, India. The floor of our living room is strewn with random trinkets and laundry, both of which seem to be creating a distinct "India smell" in our apartment. It's difficult to describe, although it seems to be a combination of incense, body odor, and air pollution.

This will be the first in a series of (probably) 4 posts on India. We visited 4 very different cities in our 7 days in India. Today's post will focus on our first stop: Delhi.

Delhi was our point of arrival in India: we flew in late Saturday night/early Sunday morning, and went straight to our hotel for a few hours' sleep. We had "splurged" on our accommodation in Delhi, reasoning that we would benefit from a couple nights of sound sleep. Turns out that $30 US per night, although expensive by Indian standards, doesn't go far in Delhi. Our hotel smelled constantly of burning garbage, the sheets were covered in mysterious stains, and our bathroom resembled a Guantanamo Bay interrogation cell. We were thankful that we'd brought our own sheets and towels.

Sunday morning we arranged for a whole-day taxi to take us to the sights around Delhi and (most importantly) to our cooking class. Our friends Rus and Mel came with us on this trip, and she had pre-arranged a cooking class for our first day. It was a great time.
We started off learning all about Indian spices and ingredients. We learned several "secrets" of Indian cooking. For example, did you know that Indian cooks "temper" their cooking oils by popping a few cumin or mustard seeds in the hot oil before adding further ingredients? Also, we learned the importance of fresh spices (used liberally, as you can imagine, in Indian cooking):
Our teacher in this cooking class was a lovely middle-class Indian lady who runs these classes out of her apartment as a means of supplementing her income. It was a real treat to be able to see an average middle-class Indian home on our first day.

The second secret of Indian cooking that we learned was the extensive utilization of oils and Ghee (clarified butter). Every curry we made began with about 1/4 cup of cooking oil or butter. Roughly 70% of Indians are vegetarian (mostly for religious reasons). To a westerner, this statistic sounds depressing. However, I've discovered that vegetarian cuisine can be just as rich and fattening as meat-based dishes. All you've got to do is add a couple sticks of butter to each of your recipes. You'd be surprised at the number of overweight vegetarians you see in India.

For the "frying" portion of our class, we stepped out onto the balcony:
Our cooking class concluded with an amazing meal, and at about 4pm, we finally pushed back our chairs, wiped our mouths, and headed out to explore the historic sites in the city.

We started with a trip to Humayun's tomb. This is the burial place of one of the early Mughal (Muslim) rulers of northern India. He was the great-grandfather of Shah Jahan (builder of the Taj Mahal). His tomb is referred to as the first monument in India to borrow architectural styles from the Persians (present-day Iran). Although we spent 3 years living in the Middle East, this was the first time that we had seen buildings that reminded us of Aladdin. I spent the rest of the trip trying to find myself a midriff-baring silk vest and puffy pants. No success.
At the end of the day, we worked our way back to the "India Gate" (below), an enormous arch near the city center which is dedicated to India's war dead.

After two nights and really only one day, we stuffed our things into our backpacks and set out for Agra. Overall, we found Delhi to be a bit of a shock. We had expected things to be busy, crowded, polluted, and generally chaotic... just like Cairo (we thought). What we found was a bit more extreme than we'd expected. The poverty was more grinding, the piles of garbage a little higher, and the beggars just a little more desperate than we had remembered from Egypt. It's possible that our months in affluent, organized Hong Kong have softened us, but we both agreed that Delhi was generally more extreme than Cairo. It was a fascinating city, but neither of us was in any hurry to relocate there.

In part 2 of our India series, we'll discuss the adventures of life on the road in India (including some fun stories involving our private driver: "Sumer"). We'll also discuss our experiences in Agra.

We encourage you to post your comments to let us know that people are still reading our blog (especially after that long spell of silence around Christmas time). Here are a few talking points if you'd like to comment:'
1) Who would look better in the Aladdin vest and puffy pants: Brad or Emily?
2) Do you think we were crazy to bring our own sheets and towels to India?
3) What was your most intense or memorable Third World city experience?
4) Do you enjoy Indian food as much as we do? If so, what's your favorite dish? (For Brad, it's a tie between Butter Paneer Masala and Vegetable Kofta. Emily loves kashmiri potato eggplant Curry)