Delhi 28th February 2007

I decided to have another go at getting to India Gate this morning (photo right), I woke early and was out of the guesthouse by 08:45. I decided to keep a low profile today and stuck my ipod in my ears and did my best to avoid getting into any conversations (sales talks) with the locals. It didn’t put them off though and I was accosted shortly after hitting the main road. It was the usual lines, name, where from, marriage status, I just turned around to the guy and told him that I had absolutely no intention of going to visit any shops with him, but if he wants to walk along with me and chat, no problem. He didn’t take me up on my kind offer once he knew that I wouldn’t be going shopping with him.

I managed to take a wrong turn, which isn’t hard, because the map I had bore no relation to the streets I was walking down. They must rename the streets here everytime a new map comes out just to confuse people. What should have been a half hour walk ended up taking one and a quarter hours and I was “cream crackered” by the time I got there. Needless to say, there were loads of hawkers and touts hanging around the Gate but I managed to avoid most of them by ignoring them.

The gate is at the end of The Mall (the other end is the Presidents House and Parliament Buildings) and on each side of the mall there is a park with water features. I hadn’t seen a bit of grass since I got here, so I sat down for half an hour and watched a game of cricket. From there I took a walk up the Mall to the Parliament Buildings, which took about twenty minutes. I saw some Anti-Bush (as in Dubya) posters yesterday re. his visit to India, I’m not sure if he’s here at the moment, but there was a big armed guard around the Presidential Buildings, they let me through though and I looked around for about twenty minutes and took some photos. On the way back I came across two protests, one was just to the left of Parliament and was all men and around the corner there was a sit down protest by women.

At the men’s protest there were several armed police / soldiers hanging around. At the women’s protest there was one line of armed police behind barriers and behind that there was a line of armed soldiers behind more barriers and behind them was a big truck with a water cannon on the top. Judging by the display of force for the women, I wouldn’t like to get into an argument with one of them over here!

I went for lunch in the restaurant were I ate last night, there were only two other Westerners in there and the place was real busy, always a good sign. I chose the most expensive dish on the menu, which was several small bowls of veggie food (peas, potato’s and god knows what else) it also came with a poppadom and chappati. It was lovely and I had a cup of milky coffee with it. The bill came to a grand total of 95 Rupees, which is about £1.15 GBP. I went back to the guesthouse after that and crashed out on the corner bed for an hour and a half.

I went for a walk around some of the back streets (ipod plugged in) for an hour after my nap and dodged numerous hawkers and touts, bought some oranges and I’m back here on my computer downloading photos etc.