Day two in Delhi Friday 5th July.

Friday 4th July.

"Sorry I am late" says Sanjay, when he collected us a few minutes late about 0700  hrs this morning, he goes on" the traffic was bad" or words to that effect..........well ! the traffic.....

Sorry I am a bit late.

At least they drive on the correct side of the road...I think.

The traffic in Delhi...we'll the traffic in Delhi....it's .......it's.,,,,,we'll it's like....nothing really.  Has to be experienced to be believed.  I'd have to do some research, but I'd imagine that other than pedestrians the road toll wouldn't be too high...they don't travell fast enough.  Tangent alert........(Ruikar M. National statistics of road traffic accidents in India. J Orthop Traumatol Rehabil [serial online] 2013 [cited 2014 Jul 4];6:1-6. Available from: http://www.jotr.in/text.asp?2013/6/1/1/118718).  The stats say that in 2012 there were only 1.21 million road deaths in India.   Twenty three percent of the deaths are motor cyclists. This is about 43 per lakh of population compared to Australian rate of 5.6 per lakh. The state of Delhi is not listed in the top five...

A traffic Jam..ox cart actually

Now how does one explain the traffic here...noisy, chaotic, smoggy, terrifying....nah, just adjectives that pale into nothingness when trying the describe the visual and material cacophony that is Delhi traffic...can't do 

 Average speed 35-40 kph.  That's a terrifying speed. There was actually one or two ten second periods during the day that we felt that imminent collision was not going to occur.  Traffic lanes- why use the two lane markers when,  by ignoring them you can get five lanes of traffic, albeit a merging mess. Indicators..yep they're those annoying lights that flash on and off when you accidentally knock that lever to the right of the steering wheel.  Roads are for cars...NOT.!!!  Here there are buses, cars, trucks, tuk-tuks, cows, bicycles, motorcycles, ox carts, donkey(with riders), electric tuk-tuks, three wheeler trucks, every one of them has a horn.....except for the pedestrians.  A quick very unscientific survey of 20 cars revealed that 22 of then has some form of minor panel damage.

And the horns, oh the humanity....The use of horns is not, as is at home, a sign of 'I'm annoyed" or "you're doing something really dangerous".  It's just another part to the car that is used constantly...more than Vietnam, more than Sri Lanka, To use the ten second measure, just then...21.42hrs Friday night ten seconds passed with no horns heard from the Cafe in the Grand Goodwin Hotel.

Notwithstanding the above paragraphs, the skill of the drivers here is beyond anything I've seen elsewhere.  It must be remembered, though that they do only travel at relatively lower speeds, and the drivers in Melbourne could learn a thing or two about patience, and slow speed driving skills.

Once again we did yoga at Yoga Stars (tm) and ended up on Ashish Singh's Facebook page.  ...go on have a look and see of you can pick us out of the crowd. Quite different to the style we are used to...but I reckon we kept up pretty well.

We had a change of drivers- today it was Kosil, the brother of Sanjay.  Kosil was just a friend driving us around because it is illegal for non taxi drivers to take passengers.  So that was fine with us.   

First stop was a place called Qutab Complex which is about a thousand years old, but has a really huge ...even by today's standards, tower or minar as the main feature.  It was the highlight of the 600 odd years of Muslim rule of India. The tower is mire than 70 m high, of carved, mainly red, sandstone.    A main feature of Islamic sculpture and carving is that it does not feature or display any human or animal form, so this has very ornate scroll work.  

The tower was progressively completed over about 800 years of this time. 

It looks like it is leaning.... But no, just Nathalie is crocked.

Bit hard to show the scale...but it's big...and is that a UFO nah..just a plane.

 

Actually saw some blue sky, and it was hot...even by Melbourne summer standards, with a fair whack of humidity too..so lots of water, sunglasses and a daggy ( broad brimmed suspiciously like an ex police broad brimmed) hat.

Even in the short time we have been here,there have been a number of comments about "the hat".  Thinking the first three or so were people being facetious, just let it go, but it seems that I could have a business venture going here....export all the ex broad brimmed hats to India.....tip one - I is don't let them get wet....the dye turns your head,face and clothing purple. Tip two- the sticky outie brim needs to be softened, otherwise you look like a roofing nail.  Whoa.....I think that was a tangent.....well spotted...

The hat 

Did we mention it is hot here.   Next stop was a Hindu temple, Chhatarpur Temple, dedicated to one of the 20, 000 or so Hindu deities.  It idolises its founder Baba Sant Nagpal ji, whose image is one about every surface other than where the deities are.  It is said to be the second biggest temple in the world, the biggest one we visited yesterday.  Lots of walking....much of it in bare feet.  One of the striking features, to us, anyway was the amazing mosaic floor of  one of the temples 

Visually spectacular tiled floor of the Chhatarpur Temple...quite toasty on the bare feet too

Haven't quite worked it out, but today we were asked on three seperate occasions to be in the photo of complete strangers....we don't mind, and they are pretty happy with the result.

Bit fuzzy but you get the gist...don't know who two of the people in this photo are ...that blonde lady just keeps appearing.

 

Lunch was a bit of an adventure, and a language gap.  Via third hand translations we told Kosil that we hadn't eaten yet and would like some lunch.  It appears that he was told we needed a fancy place, serving western food, and piano music.....we followed, up three flights of stairs, and as we waled in, it was like the old westerns, where the music stops, chatter stops, and everyone turns around and looks at you......we stuck to our guns and u turned, and through a phone conversation convinced Kosil that 'street food' was what we wanted....so rather than a steak, wine and music, we had some sort of street food, water, and honking horns on a park bench...all for 120 r.   

That's better...real food....

Then we visited a place called Haus Kaus which had a deer park, and a lake and it was hot and the monsoon was again threatening...so made short work of it.

It had been a busy few days, so we went back to the hotel, showered and recharged our batteries, after we got the air conditioner in the room fixed, then out locally for some mango shakes, 

Gotta love the sexy legs..

and then Indian food for dinner..pretty surprising really

Another big day to bed....phones working now...but as we tried to make our first call, we were dieted to a government call centre to confirm my, my father's name, address and that we were the ones applying for the phone card.  Nathalie had to do the same...but she had to tell them her husband's name....bit paranoid eh?

Off to Amritsar tomorrow .