April 6, 2008 – Delhi, India

So Delhi is kind of fabulous.
I think once again our impression of it is skewed from typical backpackper impressions because we’re staying with current residents, but who knows for sure.

9 years ago, probably almost to the day, I met my friend Jan while we were both on separate Canada-Germany exchanges – he from Ottawa to Berlin, me from Vancouver to Berlin. Somehow we’ve kept in touch with sporadic emails & visits, and now, so many years later, Evy & I are staying with a fantastic girl from France, Lucie, who happened to room with a girlfriend of Jan’s while she was on a university exchange in Montreal, and became friends with him there… Make sense?! Either way, we were put in contact with one another, & without having ever met us Lucie kindly offered us free couch space – always an exciting thing for the backpacker!

What we didn’t realize prior to arrival was that the offer of couch space was in reality an offer of what is practically yet another home away from home. People have been so nice to use here!
The apartment in which Lucie lives with 3 other roommates is massive, all with marble floors & bathrooms attached to each bedroom (3 – a couple lives in one of them). A comfortable porch looks out over some greenery, there’s an additional back porch, and there’s a decent sized kitchen & dining area. Did I mention that they split a rent of approximately $630 between them for this place?! Apparently that’s cheap by Delhi standards too, but for us it’s kind of insane. Couch space in this case is actually two comfy separate mattresses that can be taken off their stands and brought into Lucie’s room, which has air conditioning. But have we needed the air-conditioning?! You might think so, given the 40º weather we’d been experiencing in Jhodpur and Jaisalmer, but I think part of the appeal of Delhi for us at the moment (and apparently this is very unusual for the city) is that it actually feels like spring. It rained! It’s cool! Cool but warm, as in the perfect Vancouver early summer temperatures of low to mid-twenties. As the days go by it’s already starting to get warmer, but there’s also a general feeling of greenery here. I suppose due to coming from the desert-like dusty scrub region we particularly notice it, but to be surrounded by huge healthy trees and low-lying greenery again is kind of nice.

The awesomeness of the apartment and Lucie and her roommates aside (all have experience with backpacking and totally get our appreciation for things like a hot shower and to have the use of items such as a fridge and stove), I’m somewhat ashamed to say that perhaps one of the largest parts of Delhi’s appeal for me is in it’s much more western feel. It feels like an international city, Indian style. It still has auto-rickshaws and bicycle rickshaws and beggars and everything, but it also has areas with large paved roads with greenery and clean buildings, areas with shops & restaurants that could be transplanted to North America no problem, and best of all, mini grocery-style stores which sell varieties of cheeses, yogurts, breads, and other such western-style foods. (I hadn’t seen a block of cheddar cheese since I left, this is the first approximately good bread we’ve had since January, and we have the ability to buy different types of peanut butter, mayonnaise, lunch meats, nutella – products that in general are a real hassle to find if they exist at all – they’re all here! They even had things like Rittersport & Lindt chocolate, Haribo gummy bears… Evy and I were held mesmerized in a store for a good fifteen minutes, wandering around looking at all our options. I realize that sounds rather sad but it was so much fun! Even if you don’t want everything it’s nice to know the option’s there, thanks in particular to the European ex-pats! I couldn’t resist buying the Boursin cheese and we’ll probably be buying some high-end chocolate for Nepal!).

We did the required Agra Taj Mahal/Fort visit – ultra expensive but interesting nonetheless. My favourite, as it seems it is with some others, was actually the Baby Taj. Other than that it’s just been nice just to relax in Delhi, especially since we fly to Nepal tomorrow and then leave on what should be a rather grueling trek on Tuesday. Always a new destination in the world of Mad & Ev!
{Our trek has been advanced by a couple of days due to the impending elections in Nepal – hopefully this will not prevent us from completing it! We’re a little worried about it, physically and politically, but we’ll play it by ear…there should be some interesting posts when we get back!}