#9 - Delhi

Ok, so I haven't posted here in almost 2 months. This is the last of three posts covering the time up until now (mid-December). Photos soon, I swear.
Last weekend, a group of us went to Delhi.

To save time, I'm going to use the text of an update by my friend Gary, from his website itsgary.com. My additions in italics, and changes use strikethrough. [Original post]

Thursday

We left for the airport a little after lunchtime I left Mysore in a cab around noon on the 3 hour trip to Bangalore and ended up at the airport with plenty of time to spare, especially since the flight was delayed. Security was pretty lenient it seemed. It seemed like they weren’t even looking at our baggage during security check. The flight between Bangalore and New Delhi took about four hours due to a layover in Hyderabad. We flew on SpiceJet. It had pretty comfortable leather seats. Instead of peanuts, we got mints and water. The bottle of water was as small as an Ipod Nano. [...] [On the plane, Gary] read about all the scams that might occur in New Delhi… such as a cab driver claiming there was a riot in town and then take you to another hotel that cost more… or having you call your hotel to verify the booking, only to find out it was double-booked and the cab driver would then take you to a more expensive hotel. So after reading these things, [Gary] was pretty suspicious when our hotel ended up being double-booked and we were moved to a hotel that wasn’t as nice. What happened was, when we were booking the hotel a week and a half earlier, basically everything was booked. So I talked to this hotel and the guy wasn't sure whether he had rooms, but eventually said, "I will have rooms for you." So when we showed up, they took me inside the hotel (not usually a part of the scams) and told me they were booked. But since they had promised me rooms, they had found a different hotel that would take us for at least that night. We were originally supposed to be charged at the same rate as the nicer one… but the guy at the front desk wasn’t aware so he gave us the normal rates which was half of what we would be paying at the other hotel. I think this was a misunderstanding, that we wouldn't be paying more than at the better hotel.
But anyway, the original hotel had gotten this arranged through a travel agent named Tariq, who ended up being really helpful and organizing stuff for the rest of our trip. He got us a van to drive us all day Friday, and from Saturday morning until Sunday night, and he found a hotel in Delhi for us to stay on Sunday night - our original plan had been to stay in Agra a second night if we couldn't find anything in Delhi.

Friday

We stopped by the Qutb complex, with some nice ruins and of course the Qutub minar, Humayan’s tomb - they've got some big tombs here, India Gate, and gazed at the Parliament and India Gate from afar. The monuments (Qutb complex) were ruins so that was pretty historical and interesting to look at. It also looked like a dog park since there were a bunch of dogs everywhere. People, including little kids, enjoy taking pictures with foreigners. An Indian guy wanted to have his family take his picture next to me while wearing my sunglasses. [Gary] almost fell off a ledge at Humayan’s tomb since there was a dip in the ground that [he] didn’t see; [he] ended up tumbling into the two and a half feet tall rail.
Something happened at Humayun's tomb that really pissed me off. So we're residents here in India. We have employment visas, and we pay taxes. We have the forms to prove it. Now, at historical sites in India, there are two rates, one for Indians and one for tourists. We are not tourists, we are residents. The resident rate is about 10 Rupees (about 25 cents), and the tourist rate is usually about $5 or 250 Rupees. For us, that's a big amount. And we went through a lot of grief getting our resident permits.
At the Qutb Minar, it was a little bit of a hassle to prove that we were residents. One of us showed him their permit and passport, and then I showed him my form, and he let all 7 of us through then. Understandable. We kept having to show our permits to surprised guards when we handed them resident tickets.
However, at Humayun's Tomb, we got this jerk:

He absolutely refused to believe that we were residents. This guy was on a serious power trip. We showed him the form, and the passport, and he didn't believe us. So we argued with him a bit and he looked at the form and said it was expired (it clearly wasn't). Then he wanted proof of employment. And finally he gave in, but then had to closely inspect every single one of our forms. In a country where almost everyone you meet has an angle that I have to be on guard for, a country where I have to fend off being scammed every goddamn day, being treated like we were trying to cheat them really pissed me off. What a bastard.
Also, we saw a snake charmer near there:

Dinner was at a place called Piccadelhi, playing off the name of Piccadilly Circus, and was a London themed restaurant. I won a Piccadelhi hat for saying "My name is Ben" in Hindi ("Mera naam Ben hai"). Legal drinking age in Delhi is 25… but nobody seems to check for ID.

Saturday

Lotus Temple, Red Fort, and Safdarjung’s Tomb were today’s stops. After loading up on Subway sandwiches ([Gary's] lamb steak and cheese sandwich was apparently pretty good), we hit up the above listed destinations. Red Fort was first. While standing in a somewhat long line for tickets into the fort (because we wanted the resident rate - the tourist line was really short), the security guard pulls us aside and hands us tickets through the cloak room. Preferential treatment because we are foreigners? Probably. Inside the fort were a lot of vendors eager to take our money and a gun pointed right at the entrance as you walk in. There was also a guy who stuck with us for 20-30 minutes trying to become our tour guide until Ben went off on him (he was really insistent). Lotus Temple is a Baha'i temple where people from all religions can come to pray. It had really nice architecture, but that was about it. Safdarjang’s Tomb was very similar to Hamayan’s tomb except not as nice. Apparently this is the place to be if you have a boyfriend or girlfriend. Everywhere you look, you’ll see couples sitting around making out. We departed on our 4+ hour drive to Agra afterwards and arrived at the Trident Hilton where room service for $9 got [Gary] a burger with fries and three scoops of vanilla ice cream.

Sunday

Got up at around 5AM in order to see the Taj Mahal during sunrise, which wasn't as exciting as we'd hoped. There was a lot of haze and clouds, so there wasn't really any color in the sunrise. It’s pretty impressive from afar since it is massive. There are two buildings on each side of it. One is a mausoleummosque. The other is a building that was built for the sake of symmetry. [Gary] was stuck walking around without shoes on. Everyone else had shoe socks but [Gary] failed to pick one up. -_-
The Taj Mahal was really beautiful. There's not much to say about it other than that it lives up to all the expectations.
We then headed back to the hotel where [Gary] played eleven games of ping pong with Shiraz and lost all eleven of them. [Gary's]high score against him is 8 points. Miserable.
We headed over to Agra Fort later, took some pictures, then headed back over to the backside of the Taj Mahal to check it out during sunset. We had to cross this bridge to get across the river to the other side of the Taj. Check out the traffic:

[Gary doesn't] know if it was haze, smog, or both, but it didn’t really look that special during sunset. There was a camel hanging out over there, though. [Gary and I] didn’t feel like riding it, though. [Gary] can’t taint [his] other experience by riding this one…
Headed back to New Delhi afterwards…

Monday

Nothing exciting here. Wandered around and looked to see if there was anything to buy. The metro station here is pretty nice. It’s cheaper here than it is in Beijing. About 12 cents compared to 37 cents in Beijing. [Gary thinks] the most exciting thing that happened today was when Alex and Geoff got their cameras confiscated by metro security because they were taking pictures. They got their cameras back, though. Went back to Piccadelhi for a snack. Got back into Bangalore at about 12AM. Flew back on Kingfisher Airlines.

The trip was pretty hectic. Delhi's roads are pretty nice, but still really crowded. In fact, the ride back into Delhi on Sunday was the second-scariest driving experience I've had here, only after the maniac taxi driver who sped through Mysore traffic. This time, it wasn't the excessive speed of the driver, but of the crowd and the speed of other cars. There were a ton of weddings that night, due to some astrological event, we were told.
Due to the traffic, it took a long time to get from place to place, and so we couldn't see that many places. Everything felt rushed, except for Monday, but by then I was so tired I was crabby. But, I saw the Taj Mahal.
I stayed the night in Alex's room, and on Tuesday went to take care of some stuff in the city. I took the train back to Mysore. The train station was really hectic and confusing, but the ride back was fine.