Delhi: Reconsidered

I came down a bit hard on Delhi in my first desciption of the city. It was my first day, and the immediacy of the garbage, noise and chaos seared the most immediate impression on my mind.

Yes, Delhi is all of those things. It is dirty, chaoitic, intense and exhausting. Sitting in a cafe on a rooftop somewhere it's almost easy to forget where you are. But down on the street, the reality of it kicks you in the balls.

But Delhi, in the four days I've been here, has shown itself to be more than just a snapshot of urban squalor.

Delhi, in its way, is beautiful. I remember two days ago I was walking down a market street, drinking bottled water and exploring the bazaar. I stopped to light a cigarette.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a flash of brilliant color. It was a family of orthodox Sikhs in their traditional garb being pulled along by a fellow on a cycle rickshaw.

The husband had a long beard and a beatiful, jewel-inlayed schimitar in a scabbard on his belt. All three members of the family wore flowing silk robes of the most otherworldly electric blue color I've ever seen. It looked like a cross between moutaintop noontime sky and the spark of an arc-welder. I envisioned the family standing in a room lit by nothing more than the luminescence of their own clothing. It was breathtaking.

I watched them merge with the frantic, dusty river of traffic. "This," I thought, "is the sort of thing I came here to see."

I met a very nice young couple from London, and we spent yesterday exploring the tomb of 15th-century Mughal ruler Humayan. It's an incredible, sprawling complex built around an ornate central palace, designed by the same architect who later designed the Taj Mahal.

It was beautiful, sublime, with bats squeaking in the domed roofs of the tombs and dozens of hawks flying in long, lazy circles outside.

I'm glad I've had the opportunity to digest a bit more of Delhi, and I can't say I haven't enjoyed it. But after two weeks I it's time to get out of capital cities.

That's why today I embark upon a 16-hour, unairconditioned bus ride to the foothills of the Himalaya and the town of Dharamsala, near the Kashmiri border - home of the Tibetan government-in-exile and His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.