Delhi, India
After a relatively luxurious express train ride through the night, we arrived back in Delhi, greeted by millions of fireworks. It felt like we were entering a war zone, with bombs going off all around us. The air was thick from the gun powder smoke. As we walked a block to our hotel, my natural reaction was to remain hunched, hands covering my head, trying to keep to the safety of sidewalk awnings.
Divali is India’s biggest festival of the year, celebrating the victory of good over evil, celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs and Jains. Much like Christmas in the west, many people decorate their homes with colourful lights or lanterns (we even saw railway-side slums decked out in lights). Children receive gifts of new clothes, candy and if they’re more fortunate: toys. After the sun sets, and throughout the night, people set off fireworks, anywhere, everywhere, and in all directions. We even saw small children setting off large bottle rockets, seemingly aimed at our hotel rooftop patio, where we stood watching in awe. I can’t even imagine how busy the hospital emergency rooms must have been that night.
We were eager to get to Nepal to do some trekking, before the weather up in the mountains gets too cold, so we booked the next flight to Kathmandu, and enjoyed one last day exploring the cosmopolitan city of Delhi.
We visited the rather large (the largest in India) mosque in old Delhi, Jama Masjid, where we climbed up a very tall tower within the mosque, for a panoramic 360 degree view of the city. What a claustrophobic, acrophobic experience. The spiral staircase was dark, and narrow, with barely enough room for one person to get through, let alone two people trying to pass as one goes up and the other comes down. At the top, it was a very small semi-circle platform, with nothing stopping you from getting pushed over the ledge and down the stairwell, which seemed likely to happen as visitors just kept on coming up. We managed to get a few quick shot of the crowded street below, before slinking away and back down to sanity.
