I hate Delhi...it is truly a dirty, chaotic city with a lot more unfriendly people then was at least noticable to us anywhere else. The only fights we've had with merchants and drivers has been here in Delhi...whoa. So after a nice evening with the last few people in our group before saying goodbye last night, Sarah and I were again on our own in Delhi. We decided in an effort not to go stir crazy after such an intense adventure to this point, that we would take on Delhi one more time with new eyes...new experienced eyes. Although not even half as scary to us as when we got here, we still do not enjoy this city very much. There is one area called Canaught Place right in the center of New Delhi so we grabbed a tuk tuk and asked him to head over there. As soon as we are already driving (always the case), he tells us Canaught place is closed because it is Monday and at first we believed him because most of India is closed on Mondays and all the little bizarres were so we agreed to check out some mall he knew was open. On the way over he made the mistake of telling us he is Punjabi, not from Delhi where they speak only Hindi, so after we got to the dumb mall and he agreed to wait around while we checked it out, we went in and walked around while I saulked because I wanted to be at Canaught place. I noticed a few mins in that no one was speaking Hindi in the mall..only Punjabi, and that is when I recalled being told that tuk tuk drivers, and all drivers really, try and take you to their friends and families stores to support them and also to get commission so we immediately went outside to him and said, we don't care if you think Canaught place is closed, take us there.
Turns out he didn't even know where or what it was, he was totally bsing us, once we finally got there we bailed out and tried to pay him, he wouldn't take our money and said just to come back in a few hours to the same spot for a ride back to the hotel. This is a common practice with drivers, they will wait several hours just to get the guarenteed fare both ways and they know tourists are honest people for the most part and will come back to them.
Our moron made the mistake of parking a good km from where we wanted to be so we eventually didn't even know how to get back to him and just left with another tuk tuk after walking around all afternoon in Canaught place. Sure enough, we get back to the hotel and who is there angrier then you can imagine...haha So we explain we got lost and didn't have his mobile number, he calms down and says he wants 1000 rupees for the day of waiting around for us but Sarah snapped on him and they got into a fight over it..in my head as I listen to both wingnuts lose it over 1000 rupees all I can think is, that is 23 canadian dollars...who cares!!? So I threw 700 rupees at him and told them to both shut it. He thanked me and Sarah stormed to the hotel...lol
While we were in Canaught Place we had two "interesting" experiences...the first was watching an officer beat a rickshaw driver, I had heard that this happens, that police and officers of any kind sometimes just beat local paid drivers if they are breaking rules and that you are to turn away and pretend you don't notice or you will get a beating too. Originally, we approached two officers to help stop traffic so we could cross this insane street with no light crossings for miles and as we are talking to them a rickshaw driver was trying to pull a fast one by driving against the traffic because the traffic was lighter on our side of the street than the one he should have been on....so one of the officers leaves our conversation and rips the driver off the rickshaw and starts hitting him...the man tries to run and is pushing his rickshaw back around to go the other way but the officer followed him kicked him over and over and hitting him in the back...I didn't see anymore because I turned away and told Sarah to do the same. The other officer acted like it was perfectly normal and stopped the traffic for us AND walked us across the street as if they were these friendly, sweet people...craziness
The second was meeting a man who just bought a huge suitcase, he was this very happy, younger man who told us he is getting married to his girlfriend up North is Kashmir next month so he needed a suitcase. He is a travel consultant in Canaught place and told us after we were done shopping to drop in for a chai and tell him about our travels. We completely forgot about him hours later but we ended up walking by his office by coincidence and he popped his head out and told us to come in. It was a nice, air conditioned office (bonus!) he gave us mineral water and had a chai with us while we told him about our tour and then he told us about his finace and showed us pictures on his facebook of where she lives. It was a funny little experience but a good one. We said our goodbyes after and all exchanged facebook addys of course..lol and we were on our way!!!
Now we are officially hiding out in our hotel until we head to Beijing!
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