Day 216: Touch of Madness

For better or worse, no country on my trip previously has come close to matching India in the spectrum of its humanity. Everything contributes to a sensory overload of sounds, smells, tastes and utter, utter chaos. Compared to some of the later cities Delhi is positively orderly, but when I first arrived my naive self was pretty overwhelmed by the traffic and aggressive merchants.
I decided to rent a driver for the day since it was cheap and convenient for seeing as much of the city as I could in the single free day I had. Our first stop was at the tomb of the Mughal Emperor Humayun. The tomb itself had some renovations ongoing, but you could still go inside, and there were lots of other old buildings and ruins surrounding it.

The next stop was at the Baha'i House of Worship, more commonly known as the Lotus Temple (for obvious reasons - see pictures). Baha'i is a monotheistic religion somewhat connected to Christianity, Judaism and Islam, but it's main tennants include emphasis on unity of humanity and religion, and is more a religion of bringing people of different faiths together than drawing lines on what seperates them. In line with this, the Lotus Temple is open and free to all, and is a quiet place the encourages people of all religions and faiths for prayer and meditation - not such a bad concept. You have to do the long approach through the grounds to the temple barefoot. Once there, people queue up and are allowed in in groups to keep the place from getting too crowded, but once inside you're welcome to stay as long as you want and as long as you keep silent. The contrast to the loud chaos in the rest of the city made this my favourite place of the day.

The next stage of the day got a little unpleasant. My drive informed me that, like in China, I was obligated to stop at little craft shops throughout the day so that he could get paid off by them for bringing people in. The difference between these and China is that here there were no demos or useful information in exchange - it was just people pressuring you to buy things. After I walked through the first shop without showing any interest in anything, my driver got mad at me because the shop wouldn't give him money since I didn't buy anything or even really consider anything. I explained to him that these shops weren't part of our agreement in the morning when we agreed on the price and services, but he asserted that this was how things happened in India. He then bought me water and bananas as a "gift" and got angry again when I tried to turn them down. In the end I gave in and feigned enough interest in a few shops to get him his cut, mostly just to get through the day and not get stranded in the middle of Delhi.

With that out of the way, he took me to Qutab Minar which is a red tower that is the largest minaret in India. Like the tomb, there were lots of other structures around, but nothing I found too spectacular. I did get mobbed by 5 or 6 teenaged girls that all wanted a picture with me - the life of a goofy white boy in underdeveloped Asia.

On the way back to my hostel at the end of the day we swung by the neat, orderly streets of the government district to take a peek at the government buildings and the Prime Minister's massive house.