Delhi in one day

First and only real day of exploration in Delhi. At the agency, I had booked a driver for the day. But I needed to get there with the subway, with all my luggage.

Ripped off by a rickshaw driver 101: "I ll take you where you want for the same price as the subway!"

You and I both know very well that it is false. I negotiated and I get in. But the driver drops me a little further, saying that the road to where I am going is closed. Still, we know that this is false. But rather than me getting carried around the city by a dishonest driver, I returned with my plan A: the crowded subway, super nice with all my luggage.

My driver took me to the Gandhi memorial, a huge park where dogs roam, as everywhere in town. The park, neat, has in its center a piece of marble where the Mahatma was cremated. One must remove their shoes to get close. By handing our shoes to a guard who insisted that we gave them to him, we learn that this man asks for a tip. Leave your shoes at the entrance, unguarded, and it will do just as nicely.

Follows a visit to the Red Fort and Humayun's Tomb, a mini Taj Mahal. Children are playing cricket with nothing, dogs are mangy and we must pay attention to pigeons, which are everywhere. If the place was relatively quiet, it is difficult to take a photo without someone walking in front of the camera at the last minute.


With a driver, we will necessarily take the meal in a restaurant full of white people dragged there by other tourists. Prices are inflated. When you can organize your own...

Ditto for the silk shops, where they will roll their eyes if you don't buy anything. Avoid feeling bad. Drivers will take you without asking to receive a commission.

The Lotus Temple is another beautiful attraction, making beautiful pictures, but it has nothing special. Shoes must be removed, one need to remain silent, and you leave when you're ready. And that's all.

Walking in Delhi gives us the chance to enjoy traffic, always infernal, always congested. Impossible to say how many lanes there actually are. Everyone honks and everyone "drove into one big crowd".

Finally, in the evening, I boarded an overnight train to Varanasi. At the station in Delhi, you can pay a carrier, which wears some kind of white rope around an arm and a license number. He carries our bag, but most importantly, it takes us exactly where we will board the train.

Advice : do not trust anyone on the train. Nobody. Never buy food on the train. Ever. And lock your luggage. In the case of a night train, using your bag of valuables as a pillow is a great idea.

A small display problem almost made me miss one train, since the one that was in the station had the wrong number up to five minutes before departure. Whew!

What is good, however, to ensure boarding the right one, there is a list of passengers stuck on each carriage. By finding the right car, with our seat number, we can confirm we are boarding the right vehicle. Magic!