Delhi day one

Nigel Hankin is an 87 year old Englishman who stopped here when the dropping of the bomb spared him being posed to Burma in 1945. He has been here ever since. For the past 40 years, 6 days a week he has given the most sought after tour of "working Delhi." And i can see why. We began at the home of Indira Ghandi which is now a museum. A crystal walk way marks her last steps before her guards shot her. We went from there to a Sikh temple, a 14th century well, the government buildings of New Delhi designed by Lutyens and then to a cremation site on the Ganges -- see photo of a body being sprayed with water from the Ganges -- the river is too filthy to go stand in or dunk a body. At least half a dozen funeral pyres were going during our stop. Bodies are burned within two hours of death.

After lunch we wandered -- Nigel knew where HE was going -- through the old Delhi working bazaar, all wholesale stand for everything from chemicals to nuts and spices and wedding dresses and silver. We walked through shops separated by one person width on a meandering path that led thru time back to another century. Men carrying enormous sacks of whatever you can think of on their backs and heads, pushing carts piles 6 feet high with sacks of tea and grain and rice. We were unnoticed mainly except for a young child who followed Kalli, w were the only white people we saw . Nigel knew all the shopkeepers, would stop by one, grab a handful of something out of a sack and tell us -- this is "lac" for making lacquer, this is myrrh, this is shellac, you name it. We all coughed and choked --along with the natives --in the spice alleys. We saw women only in the wedding alley, trying on gowns.
Earlier we stopped in the abandoned grounds where George V of England had come to announce the new capital would be Delhi. His statue was removed from New Delhi to this now empty field after India's independence -- all well described in William Dalrymple"s "City of Djinns."It was a great lecture from Nigel complete with a picture of the English planning committee roaming around delhi on an elephant looking for a place to build the new city.

We ended the day with another great meal from Bob and Dana's cook Rahjan and head out tommorow at 6 a.m. on the train to Agra. Packing will be easy since our 3 bags are lost with a thousand others (not making that up) somewhere in British Airways' baggage claims. But if it were not for Jan Nowak of British Airways -- may her numbers increase -- we would not have made it here at all after we missed our connection in London due to our plane being 2 hours delayed leaving Washington after a truck hit the wing!