Last night we joined our small, but intrepid, group of travelers. The hangover from COVID is still having an impact on group sizes. G-Adventures guarantees that they will always run a planned tour even if only two people sign up.
Starting in Delhi, here is a map of our tour itinerary across north central India.
Today they took us out into Delhi for a city tour.
Traffic in Delhi is monumentally crowded. There are all types of vehicles from motorcycles up to giant tour buses. The most common vehicles I see are small white sedans. There are also many, many thousands of green and yellow tuk-tuks that run on natural gas. We have taken cheap Uber rides in them a few times so far. A 20-minute Uber ride costs as little as $1.50.
This morning we visited a non-profit called Salaam Balaak Trust that provides services for runaway children up to a place to stay, food, and help with education and training. Our 23-year-old guide, Asif, came up through the program. His mother left the family, his father died of tuberculosis, and he ran away from his sister’s family for the first time at age 8. Asif said that he set a record of running away from various situations 17 times in 3 years because he would get bored. He is now a very composed, well-spoken young man.
There are a variety of religions here that are hard for me to understand. Hinduism seems like a base religion. Offshoots of Hinduism are Jainism (oldest), Buddhism, and Sikhism (primarily northern India). Our guide, Jai, is Hindu and a devotee of gods Shiva (snake) and Hanuman (monkey face). According to Britannica, Hanuman, in Hindu mythology, was the monkey commander of the monkey army. His exploits are narrated in the great Hindu Sanskrit poem the Ramayana (“Rama’s Journey”). While still a baby, Hanuman, the child of a nymph by the wind god, tried to fly up and grab the Sun, which he mistook for a fruit.
Different people in a family may worship or associate with a different god. The various Hindu gods don’t lead people to a different philosophy. The objective of each person is not to be reincarnated but to go on to a higher level. Where they are in life is based on what they did in a past life good or bad. They don’t want to accumulate anything in the current life that would cause them to come back again. Try to live in the moment because you can’t take anything with you.
We went to a Sikh temple where people donate money or goods or work. There is no class or caste system in Sikh, all are equal in the eyes of the Guru, mostly the 10th Guru. There’s no god in this religion, people follow one of the Gurus.
These women just show up and start making bread for the temple.
Jama Masjid was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan between 1650 and 1656. Mughal mosque architecture featured three domes. Situated in the Mughal capital of Shahjahanabad (today Old Delhi), it served as the imperial mosque of the Mughal emperors until the demise of the empire in 1857 when the British took over.
The Qutub Minor tower was built to celebrate Muslim dominance in Delhi after the defeat of Delhi’s last Hindu ruler. This tower at 240 feet is the highest tower in India. It is a minaret and victory tower built in the early 13th century and is made primarily of red sandstone.
We passed by Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib, one the nine historical Gurdwaras in Delhi. It was first constructed in 1783 as a small shrine to commemorate the martyrdom site of the ninth Sikh Guru. A gurdwara is a Sikh place of worship. The members of the Sikh regiment of the Indian army have saluted the Sis Ganj Gurudwara before saluting the president of India since 1979, the only instance of saluting twice in the Republic Day parade by a regiment of Indian army.
Again today the city is crowded and chaotic.
Here’s one way to transport eggs. Maybe he’s delivering them to the vendor below. In much of the world eggs are not refrigerated.
Here is another style of small shrines that we see around the city.
People will try anything here to earn a buck. A man approached me with a long Q-tip and seemed to be offering to clean out my ears!
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