This post is a long time coming, I should've written about it as soon as I got back. But internet here is not constant or dependable. Better late than never I guess.
Delhi was in a word awesome. I was really impressed with the city's ability to keep it's historic feel in tact. There were so many monuments, from different times in history- it was fascinating to learn about the different emperors, dynasties, monuments, tombs, etc. The architecture was even more amazing. The intricacy of he work and the deep history within each was so humbling. For example, every flower in the Taj Mahal is apparently faced down, to signify mourning of the dead queen. It was fascinating to be surrounded by so much history and try to imagine how the kings and queens lived so many years ago. Not only tombs that signified love on a large scale, but the artifacts of wars were amazing as well. I'm usually not the one to be fascinated by battle or wars but to see the Forts, standing magnificently tall was humbling. I've seen movies where a fort is surrounded by water and the bridge that connects the fort to the road is drawn up during battle, where warriors stand on top and shoot arrows, and heard about secret tunnels, only one of which successfully lead to the outside, but it was something else to see it in person. Suddenly these surreal things seemed so real. I am, and our generation is after all, just a tiny tiny piece in the history of humans. Even more than that, I was impressed with the city's ability to evade modernity/commercialization, which currently Bangalore is not able to. Maybe it's that the population density isn't as high as it is in Bangalore, and Delhi isn't the center of the IT and biotechnology worlds but there were no high rise buildings or towering apartment buildings. After every visit, I feel like Bangalore has been slowly losing it's innocence as it embraces modernity and opens it's doors to the capitalistic world...so it was nice to see that there are cities who have evaded this step. Whether voluntarily or not, Delhi succeeded in retaining it's native feel.
The people of Delhi though, told another story. I did not feel the closeness, the friendliness or the sense of community between people that I feel here in Bangalore. Here, though we are all strangers to one another, there is a sense of brotherliness that is really empowering. It's not always one man for himself here, they do care about helping others. Of course this could entirely be because I've lived in this city for so long that time has given me the opportunity to witness this sense of community, and that couldn't really happen in Delhi because I was there for 4 days. But I did feel that sense of competing against each other, one man for himself, that I often feel in places like the United States.
The food was a total let down. I have heard so much about food being great in North India, and as a person who loves North Indian food and always orders it when I go to restaurants here in Bengaluru, I thought my taste buds would have a blast in Dilli. Boy were my expectations let down. Not only was the food almost twice the prices in Bangalore, but it was so not worth it. I am really sad to say that I had better North Indian food once I came back to Bengaluru than I did there. Maybe we didn't go to the right restaurants. Or maybe the North Indian food we eat here in South Indian isn't the legit kind and my tongue is just used to it but the food was not as good as I had expected it to be.
All in all though, I am still in love with Dilli and can't wait to go back. Even though we were there for 4 days and took advantage of every hour as we could, I feel like there is still so much to see. And I went without really reading about the history and was humbled by the richness of history and tradition. It was amazing to learn about the past, how people lived, to realize how far and how not so far we've come. We've come far in technology but still have battles and wars and death. I am falling more and more in love with traveling. I thought 4 days wouldn't be enough to see all the things I wanted to, to soak myself in Dilli, but I already feel like I went below the surface. Maybe now I am more open to traveling as a tourist...something I've always been opposed to my entire life.
