Good Horn, Good Brakes, Good Ganesh: Delhi
Delhi, India - April 2010
We'd barely entered the vast courtyard of the Jama Masjid (Friday Mosque) in Old Delhi, when the kids found us.
"Where are you from?"
"Australia."
"Ohhh — Ricky Ponting!"
Within about four seconds of landing on foreign soil, we'd been sorted, tagged, and filed under cricket. Welcome to India.
Rewind slightly: We'd landed in Delhi the night before, last off a long flight from Newark, shuffling through immigration behind what felt like every other human in the Delhi Airport. Our guide met us with cold water and fresh flowers, dropped us at the hotel, and that was night one: a blur, and then gone.
Day two started properly at Jama Masjid — shoes off and modesty robes on, we entered the complex. The scale of the courtyard, the sandstone steps, and those kids…. Ricky Ponting, Adelaide Oval… it was ALLLLLL cricket.
Then we were straight into a rickshaw, weaving through Chandni Chowk toward the Red Fort. This is the part that still sits with me: the density of it all, the jury-rigged wiring strung over the street, a whole city just happening around us at close range.
From there, we took a quieter turn, with a visit to Birla House, now Gandhi Smriti, where Gandhi spent his last 144 days and was assassinated. An eerie stillness after the chaos of the old city.
We closed out the day of sightseeing at Humayun's Tomb near sunset. The 16th-century tomb is said to have inspired the Taj - guess we’d have to wait and see if they were right. A hundred acres of tomb, garden and quiet, right in the middle of the city, this was a great way to finish up our day of sightseeing in Delhi.
On the way back to our hotel, we made a quick stop on Raisina Hill to take some quick snaps of Rashtrapati Bhavan (the President's residence).
On the way to dinner with Mohan and his family, our driver gave us the line that's stuck with me ever since; the three things you need to survive driving in Delhi:
“Good horn. Good brakes. Good Ganesh.”
Next stop: the 6am train to Agra, and the Taj Mahal by full moon.
