Ahhhh, Delhi — the first setting for my India travels. I was in Delhi to attend a week-long conference along with several of my classmates from university. We stayed for that week in the Nizamuddin West area, and to describe our neighborhood as “full of character” was accurate, descriptive, and technically true — technically in the sense that technically it was not a lie, although it didn’t quite convey the real conditions. We were not living in a slum…but it was a bit closer than we expected.

How did we know that our new ‘hood was a bit…uh…rundown? In hindsight, there were a few signs…

1 — A key landmark was “turn left at the dead rat”

2 — The tuk tuk drivers kept insisting that we were looking for another neighborhood, and refused to believe that we were staying in Nizamuddin West

3 — Local Delhians directly told us that it was a slum

So, yeah. Turns out we accidentally booked an apartment in the outskirts of a kinda shady neighborhood. But it was definitely colorful!

We had a chance to learn more about the neighborhood during a “heritage walk” organized by our conference. The organizers offered two such walks through different areas of Delhi. One walk was through Nizamuddin West, and passed within an alleyway of our door. We causally mentioned “Oh yeah, we’re staying down that alley…” and were met with wide-eyed stares from the other conference goes.

Guess they just couldn’t appreciate a little local flavor. Or navigating by dead rodent.

The walk was super helpful for identifying different parts of our neighborhood. For example, we visited a nearby mosque, the Jama ‘at-Khana-Masjid. To approach the mosque, we wound our way through narrow street after narrow street, packed with all kinds of market goods and shoppers — street food stalls, butcher shops, chickens, goats, trinkets, tea stalls, piles of plastic sandals, school children, grannies, exasperated motorcycle drivers…the works.

Suddenly, we entered an area that sold only flowers, candles, incense and bright strips of fabric. This signaled that we were approaching the mosque, which was an amazing sight to behold — an oasis of calm in the middle of this bustling neighborhood.

We removed our shoes to visit the mosque. Now that’s how to get incurable toe rot.

As part of this heritage walk, we also visited several development and restoration projects spearheaded by the Aga Khan Development Foundation. My favorites were a school for local schoolchildren and a park for women, run by women — cuts down on the harassment when it’s a ladies-only environment.

The conference organized a second heritage walk, which was a more traditional visit to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Humayun’s Tomb complex — full of sprawling gardens, gorgeous architecture, and many, many tombs.

Try to see the sun rising. And if you can’t spot the sun, don’t panic — it’s not you, it’s the pea-soup pollution dampening the light, snuffing out all traces of hope, and smothering joy with a thick blanket of despair.

Delhi’s air quality could use a little improvement, is what I’m saying.

Visible sunlight or not, it was a jungle out there!

I had thought that our neighborhood of Nizamuddin West was bustling, but that impression was dispersed on the day we visited Old Delhi. Everything about Nizamuddin — the crowds, the noise, the hectic energy and constant flow of people, goods, cows, goats, everything — was magnified tenfold in Old Delhi. The streets were narrower, the crowds were bigger, the pace was faster at times (like when you wanted to slow down for a closer view of some fascinating trinket) and slower at other times (like when you couldn’t wait to move away from the overwhelming stench of goat waste and butcher shops).

I love visiting markets, so it was fun to walk through the crowds…for the first couple hours. After that, we were ready to be out…but realized there was no way to escape except to just. keep. walking.

For reference, this is the kind of crowd we were pushing/being pushed through.

Note the well organized electric lines…and monkeys. Rather than carefully inspecting wires for safety hazards, the monkeys turned out to be the hazards — we got lunch in a paratha shop that lost power halfway through our meal (very exciting to be sitting indoors, in the dark, with absolutely no light source and no understanding of why the power is out). Later found out that the monkeys frequently cause these power outages by connecting lines. Oops.

This stall looked sanitary enough for a paratha. Or ten.

(Although seriously, they were insanely delicious parathas….I’m ready to fly back just to get more of these treats.)

More local Delhi snacks — featuring a bread vendor and Talia, securing us a unique saffron dessert that apparently can only be found in Old Delhi.

Islands of quiet amidst our crazy afternoon.

Loved this mix of old and new architecture.

So there it was, Delhi in a nutshell.

Aaaaaand after that hectic week, we quickly decided it would be nuts to stay any longer than necessary. Ciao Delhi, we hardly knew ya! On to more sights….like Agra, Jaipur, and the fabled Taj. Coming soon to an update near you.