Quickie (Jan. 9)

There are few things more anticlimactic than spending a frantic hour in the morning visiting money-changers, flushing controlled substances down the toilet, and dashing for a train that will take you halfway to a seldom-used jungle border crossing, only to find that your train has been delayed three hours because of fog. Such are the disappointments of the travel writer's life.

On the other hand, immediately before stepping into this cybercafe I successfully negotiated the price of a pair of "Ray-Ban" sunglasses down from 1050 rupees to 60 rupees. There are always little victories.

I've been back in Delhi for the better part of a week finishing up most of the work I have to do for the city. Remarkably, nothing particularly weird or exciting has happened to me, unless you consider sprinting across traffic in the streets of New Delhi and narrowly avoiding death exciting. Really at this point it is just becoming tedious.

The best part of the week was I finally got myself a Christmas present: a new camera! woop woop. Since I had to go visiting all these monuments in Delhi I spent a lot of time playing around with it and I've just uploaded a bumper crop of Delhi photos. I'm pretty happy with my new toy. It's slim and sexy and takes great pictures. I am however still struggling with the technical difficulties of shooting in "smofog", my term for the combination of fog, clouds, and light brown smog that hangs over everything in Delhi in the middle of the winter. It got so bad one day that crossing somewhere in the middle of the Rajpath (like the DC-esque "National Mall" of India), I could not see the monuments at either of its ends. Smofog has a particularly deleterious effect on the visual appeal of gray stone domes that soar over many of the mosques and tombs of the city.

Nevertheless, I had a surprisingly good time in this dump. Here's a rundown of the places I photographed.

1) Pahar Ganj: The cheap, convenient, and highly sleazy New Delhi bazaar neighborhood where I naturally spend much of my time.

2) Old Delhi: The old Mughal walled city, now a massive warren of bazaars and alleyways between craptacular new buildings, but bursting with people and a fascinating blend of old traditional enterprises and newer, crummier businesses, like an entire street that sells nothing but recycled tail-lights. I have no idea how the shops in Delhi don't all go bankrupt.

3) Jama Masjid: The main Mughal mosque in Old Delhi, built by Shah Jahan (who also ordered the Taj Mahal). It is also the largest mosque in all of India

4) The Red Fort: The massive Mughal fort of Delhi, a city of palaces that was rather spoiled by the British, and now a symbol of Indian independence.

5) The Spice Bazaar: A spice wholesaler's market occupying an decrepit old Mughal-era mansion, the finest example of what pretty much all of Old Delhi is, namely crumbling old mansions repurposed as coal warehouses and the like.

6) Purana Qila: an old ruined fort city now in New Delhi, which was taken from the Sultans by the early Mughal emperors.

7) Humayun's Tomb: Actually a garden of many noble Mughal tombs, the most impressive of which is that of the emperor Humayun.

8) Nizamuddin: A medieval village centered on an important Sufi Islamic shrine (Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah), now completely engulfed my swanky neighborhoods of New Delhi, but still almost choked with pilgrims, goats, and a chaotic assortment of traditional Muslim goings-on.

9) Lodi Gardens: Another garden of tombs now surrounded by the streets of New Delhi. This one is now a popular public park, and contains many tombs from the pre-Mughal medieval Sultanate era, including the tombs of the sultans Sikander Lodi and Muhammad Shah.

10) Safdarjung's Tomb: yet another tomb garden in the area. Delhi is completely littered with the ruins of the many old cities and countryside tombs that now typically sit in traffic circles and the like. This magnificent one is from the late Mughal period of utter decline, and houses the grave of an extremely potent Mughal governor.

11) The Lotus Temple: technically the Baha'i' House of Worship, the showcase temple of the Baha'i' religion's presence in India, a super-cool white building that looks like the Sydney Opera House morphing into a lotus flower. Alas, this one was particularly begging for blue skies in the background.

12) The Qutb Minar: The ruins of the first Muslim city in Delhi, established by the Sultans who first took India from the Hindus. It is centered on the ruins of the massive mosque "Might of Islam", the first mosque in all of India, and its gargantuan minaret, the Qutb Minar, or "Tower of Victory", a symbol of the triumph of Islam as far as the East.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have pressing matters of tax evasion to attend to, and I really must be off. Where am I going? I'll give you a hint: it will likely involve tall grass and the circumspect avoidance of rhinoceroses.

'Till next time - peace.