Photo Link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/UKSnfqcLRdpFZ26g6
I spent about a week and a half in North India before I went up to Nepal. Went to Delhi, Agra, Khajuraho, and Varanasi. Delhi might honestly be one of my all-time favorite cities, while I have never visited a place that I have disliked as much as Varansi, so it was certainly a trip of extremes. That said, I’m glad I went to Varanasi to see what it’s about, and to figure out what I like/don’t like. It was obviously unrealistic for me to actually enjoy every single thing that I will do over the next four years as well.
Delhi
I was actually shocked at how much I wound up enjoying Delhi. I would honestly place it up with Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and Istanbul as one of my favorite cities that I have ever visited. Delhi also might have trumped Mexico City as my best ever food vacation.
Starting with the food…the last time I had an orgasmic reaction when eating at a place for the first time before Karim’s, was when I had the Au Cheval burger in Chicago. I had a mutton curry and butter naan at Karim’s, which is right by the Jama Masjid in Old Delhi, and sweet baby Jesus it was out of this world. I was worried that Karim’s might be overrated because they have their own Wiki page, but thankfully those fears were unfounded. Other culinary highlights of Delhi was the Aloo Chaat at Manga Chat Wale (this was the guy featured in the Netflix show Street Food), which was also otherworldly, as well as a local Delhi drink called a Banta, which is basically lemonade sprinkled with masala. When I went down to Gurgaon (suburb of Delhi) to visit my cousin Vishnu and his wife Ruchi, they mentioned that they actually avoid some of the street food that I had due to sanitary reasons. I haven’t gotten sick yet so let’s see how that goes. But seriously, the food in Delhi is so cheap (by western standards) and so incredibly amazing.
Quick aside here – they were both incredibly nice and let me crash in their place when my flight to Kathmandu at the end of this trip was delayed by a day due to the honorable Xi Jinping holding up all flights while visiting Kathmandu. I hadn’t seen Vishnu in 5+ years, and this experience was very similar to the one Anand Giriharadas brought up in his book India Calling, where Indians will move heaven and earth to accommodate family, no matter how distant (my grandpa and his grandma were siblings). Beyond that, they were were also both really cool (both work in NGOs as well!) and we saw The Joker while I waited out my 24hr flight delay.
Back to Delhi…even after the food, Delhi was just an awesome city for a history nerd like me. I actually wasn’t a huge fan of Luytens’ Delhi, which is the planned city the British built a little over 100 years ago. It was still pretty cool architecturally to see that colonial British style, but I just thought that the Mughal style of Old Delhi dramatically overshadowed the colonial British architecture. There’s so much history in Delhi that the city is littered with public parks that have unmarked and unlabled 500+ year old mosques and tombs.
The Delhi metro was incredibly easy to use, convenient, and cheap (cheap is going to be a common theme in Asia I think), so I used that to bounce around the city and check the sites out since they are actually quite spread out. Old Delhi has the Jama Masjid (which is a massive, ornate mosque), the super crowded streets and bazaars (like Chandni Chowk), and the Red Fort complex. This is also where the bulk of the amazing street food scene is located. The Red Fort in particular was an incredible structure, and I spent over half a day just wandering around and checking out the different structures in there. Chandni Chowk is a place that I thought I would dislike (super crowded, basically a glorified slum), but I think because of the amazing food and because I already was in love with Delhi that I was able to take this in stride and enjoy it.
Another highlight was the Qutub complex, which was way down in south Delhi. This was more of an archaeological park (think the Roman Forum), but was in much more of a ruined state than the Red Fort. Some of the wall and pillar design here was crazy intricate, and it was easy to spend a few hours and get lost checking everything out here. On the way to Qutub I also stopped by the Lodhi Gardens, which was probably the nicest of the many parks in Delhi that are littered with old Mughal ruins.
I can definitely see myself visiting Delhi again, and this is one place that I would 100% recommend anyone to visit from anywhere in the world.
Agra
In Agra, I saw both the Agra Fort (in the city) and Fatehpur Sikri (a fort that is about a 2 hour bus ride outside of the city). Both were nice, but I think that because I was so impressed by the Red Fort in Delhi that they were “just OK”. Food wise, Agra was decent, though I had by far the worst meal of the trip when I went with some white friends from my hostel to some highly rated TripAdvsor restaurant and basically got glorified reheated Trader Joe’s Indian food. They somehow were all raving about it…I think the moral of the story here is that white people don’t know shit about good food. A general rule of thumb is that the grimier the place, the better the food. This was certainly true in Agra, where I went to some real hole in the walls and had incredible jalebi (deep fried sweets) with some very spicy vegetarian kurma dip.
There are certain hyped locations that for me drastically fell flat of expectations and just elicited a reaction of “…that’s it?”, like the Colosseum, Neuschwanstein Castle, or the city of Amsterdam in general. Others, like the pyramids of Giza or the Vatican Cathedral, totally lived up to the hype. The Taj Mahal lived up to the hype and then some.
For the Taj, and everything in India, I was able to pay the local tourist fee (typically under 100 rupees) with my OCI card, instead of the foreigner fee (anywhere from 500-1500 rupees). I no joke saved ~$100 on tourist fees on this Delhi/Agra/Khajuraho/Varanasi trip alone on this.
Anyways, I went at 5:30am to get in for Sunrise, and it was absolutely worth it. The area is relatively speaking empty and the heat isn’t unbearable yet, and it’s actually pretty cool to see the lighting of the marble change as the sun rises from the east (the photo above is facing directly north) over the first few hours of the morning. I literally just spent a few hours sitting around and gazing at it, as well as taking multiple rounds walking around it to look at the carvings and designs of the exterior.
This is really the only place I have been to so far where I would say it’s worth a week to fly from the US for vacation (East China, Khajuraho, and Nepal (post coming shortly after this), while all really cool, are not enough to justify a 1 week trip from across the globe I think). Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur (going later, but have heard amazing things) for one week is a very easy to do trip that pretty much anyone would love.
Khajuraho
I took an ~8 hour train ride from Agra to Khajuraho. Indian trains are super easy and convenient to use, but obviously nowhere near as good/fast as in China. Very comparable to Russia I think, which also has a comprehensive, cheap, and just plain good train system. Also saw the Bruce Springsteen movie Blinded by the Light on Netflix during this ride, and honestly can’t wait to see him in his 2020 tour in the US when I’m back home for my friends’ wedding. He’s probably the 1 person who is currently alive and touring who I haven’t seen yet that I want to see the most.
Overall, Khajuraho was also a really good trip, but I only spent a day there and it’s not worth more than that. The temples are known for their erotic carvings, but the most interesting part was just the level of detail in all of the carvings and how all these small scenes stacked up in towers around the temple. It was very different from the usual South Indian temple architecture that I am used to.
To be honest there’s not really much to say here, but if you’re in the area (i.e. North India) it is 100% worth it to check out Khajuraho and see the temples. It’s one of the most architecturally unique things I have seen, and definitely has me excited for some more temple tourism in India over the next few months (Ajanta and Ellora caves, Hampi, Tanjore/Madurai/Mahabalipuram/Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu, potentially Konark and other sites in Odisha). Given that my all time favorite vacation was Angkor in Cambodia, these other temple trips should hopefully be really cool as well.
Varanasi
Let’s start with the positives. There were only two good things in Varanasi. One was the street food, which was honestly second to Delhi and really really good. The second was the bhang lassi that I had. Bhang lassi is basically lassi (Indian yoghurt based drink that is soooo good) laced with cannabis that gets you incredibly high. I was in the middle of my 2nd day in Varnasi and absolutely hating it, so I decided to grab a cup for 100 rupees near one of the central ghats. I proceeded to find a temple, sit down, and basically got lost in the prayers for a few hours…honestly, the high you get from this goes along really well with the traditional Hindu chantings and prayers. It actually reminded me a ton of the Samskara dome that I saw in Burning Man. I suppose another positive was that I bought William Dalrymple’s latest book, The Anarchy, and started reading that. It’s been really good so far.
So, Varanasi. For some background, it is basically the holiest city in Hinduism. The entire place reeked of glorified poverty porn, where you have these rich white faux-spiritual types with “Om” tattoos, braided hair, and bullshit like that (basically, the worst people in Burning Man) coming over to gawk at predominantly poorer Hindus who are participating in religious rites.
I don’t mind a dirty city (I loved Delhi! And Delhi is objectively pretty dirty). But jesus christ Varanasi was on another level. While Chandni Chowk felt like a glorified slum, the narrow alleyways of Varanasi WAS a slum. People say that you go to Varanasi for “the experience” and not the place, as the place is pretty shitty (literally and figuratively), but “the experience” for me was, as mentioned above, poverty porn.
I also went to the Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi as this is supposed to be one of the most famous Hindu temples, and my biggest takeaway is understanding how stampedes happen. We were herded through the walkways and literally had no time to admire the architecture (or pray, if you wanted to do that).
Varanasi was also filled with all sorts of charlatans masquerading as holy men to try and squeeze money out of tourists. I couldn’t spend more than 5 minute sitting alone to check out the ghats and rivers without being hassled by some half naked man covered in ash asking for money, or by some “volunteer” who allegedly worked for the temples and desperately needed donations. This was honestly almost as bad as my experiences in Luxor and Cairo (but not Aswan!) in Egypt.
I was also put off by all the posters and signs plastered with Yogi Adityanath’s face. He’s the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh (the state where Agra and Varanasi are in), and is, no hyperbole, a straight up fascist (https://www.outlookindia.com/blog/story/hindutva-jihad-if-they-kill-one-hindu-100-will-be/3369). In Agra I didn’t really notice his face, but because he’s a right wing Hindu nutjob and Varanasi is basically the center of Hinduism in India, his face was everywhere. I guess this is minor but this was sort of a cherry on top of the already terrible place that Varanasi was for me.
Overall, this 10 day trip to North India was great. Delhi was beyond awesome, Agra was fantastic, Khajuraho was amazing, and Varanasi, as bad as it was, was not bad enough to undo the other three places. I have also become somewhat of a spice elitist after this, where I basically can’t enjoy bland food anymore.
After Varansi, I took a train to Delhi and then (after my flight delays), flew to Kathmandu. Spent another ~10 days in Kathmandu and Pokhara with 5 day trek based out of Pokhara, and should have that post up in the next few days.