Last week I finally got into exploring the city more. On Monday I went the first time to Hauz Khas village, a neighbourhood built mostly without plans or permits but nowadays spiced up with plenty of restaurants, bars and art shops. The "village" is surrounded by a park with deer and peacocks, a reservoir with swans and some medieval ruins.
The thing with Hauz Khas is not how it looks on the outside but rather what you find from the inside. The first impression after the often congested driveway includes hanging power lines and tarpaulins covering the buildings under renovation. But inside the buildings there are most charming places with great atmosphere.
Another evening I was visiting a market when the merchandise of some street vendors caught my eye: I got reminiscent of the times I was studying in Finland and some Nepalese guys cooked momos, small balls filled with meat and vegetables and topped with a dough. "Where should I taste them, probably not safe here in the market kitchens?", I asked from my Indonesian friends. And so they took me to JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) campus to the southern Delhi.
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| Some of the hostels of JNU |
The university comprises about 7500 students and has been ranked among the top universities of India. Asking one of the Indonesian girls if she has enjoyed studying there she just stated "Liked? Of course, everybody likes JNU!"
The campus is also famous for being open 24/7 and therefore people even from other universities come there to grab a bite of Indian or Chinese cuisine, for example. The students of the university mostly live in dormitories, or "hostels". Some of them are gender-divided between girls and boys, others have rooms for both sexes.
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| Jain temple at Chandni Chowk |
On Sunday it was finally the time to go explore more of Old Delhi. First we ended up in the busy and chaotic Chawri Bazaar with real rickshaws (the ones where the driver is cycling). Then walking to a direction unknown the streets were all the time less and less crowded whereas the stores increasingly organized. By chance we ended up in Chandni Chowk, the main street of Old Delhi. The road was congested with cars, rickshaws, auto-rickshaws and motorcycles and it was surrounded by stores selling jewellery, clothes or sari tissues. Amongst the commercial buildings there were temples and monuments.
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| Ajouter une légende |
At the end of Chandni Chowk stands one of Delhi's main attractions, The Red Fort. We paid the elevated foreign citizen fee to get inside 16th-century fortress. Once inside our experience was lamentably degraded by unwanted attention: Everywhere we looked there were Indian men taking pictures of us, following us or just staring (which has become quite normal by now, though).
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| Main entrance to Red Fort (Lal Qila hindiksi) |
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| Taking a picture of the throne I took one also of Indian men holding hands. Something quite ordinary here and to my understanding also in Nepal |
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Buildings inside Red Fort
Left: Birds flying off the roofs
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| By night: Rashtrapati Bhavan, presidential residence |
Another evening I was visiting a market when the merchandise of some street vendors caught my eye: I got reminiscent of the times I was studying in Finland and some Nepalese guys cooked momos, small balls filled with meat and vegetables and topped with a dough. "Where should I taste them, probably not safe here in the market kitchens?", I asked from my Indonesian friends. And so they took me to JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) campus to the southern Delhi.
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