Kalima! Kalima!

I flew into Mumbai midday Wednesday and transferred to the domestic airport to catch my connecting flight to Delhi. I queued in the men's security line and headed into the waiting room. Oddly enough I couldn't see my flight number, time or any related information on the few screens sprinkled around the room. I asked a guard. Not speaking any English, he mumbled something inaudible and pointed to the back of the room where people were passing manned stalls signposted with destinations - none of which were mine. I finally figured out how the system works. Instead of waiting for your flight and respective gate number to appear on a screen, you wait in front of a group of gates under your airline's banner until your destination pops up. This is where the boarding time becomes increasingly useful. Another mystery solved. Long story short, I made it to Delhi (but not without another airplane curry mmh mmmh mmmmmhh).

I got a pre-paid taxi to Anjli's office which, as she has told me before, is in fact someone's house in which they rent the top floor. I caught up on my Hindustan Times and India Today while I waited for her to finish work.

After dropping off my bags at her very nice place in South New Delhi, an area called Lajpat Nagar, we headed to the Defence Colony, a nearby neighbourhood known for housing a disproportionately large amount of expats. There, we ate South Indian food, mostly Dosas, large dry oniony pancake filled with potatoes and spice. Contained in the food was more than just a tasty concoction of spices and vegetables, but also a lesson: that South Indian food, often prepared on the spot, is consequently among the safest foods to eat in India.

We unfortunately did not get to sleep until late, because I brought up something that I had read in India Today about a recent Indian High Court ruling dividing the Ayodhyah religious place in three (two sects Hindu and one part Muslim). The magazine praised the maturity of the three judges and how far India has come since Independence and the tensions with Pakistan and its Muslim inhabitants. However, that's only half the story...

It starts sometime in 2nd and 3rd century BC when Valmiki wrote one of the major texts of Hinduism, known as the Ramayana. In it, he stipulates that Lord Rama, son of the childless king of Ayodhyah, was born as his only boy...and incidentally, an incarnation of Vishnu (the recognisable Elephant headed God)...come to rid the Earth of the demon king Lanka. Eventually, Rama, with the help of his trusty sidekick Hanuman (the loyal monkey God), defeated Lanka (in Sri Lanka no less) and headed home to Ayodhyah, his path lit by candles, and eventually arrived home on Diwali (the festival of light) which has been celebrated ever since. His importance in Hinduism should not be underestimated.

Flip to the 16th century. The Mughal empire imports the Abrahamic religion of Islam and builds a mosque, Babri Masjid, in the vicinity of Lord Rama's supposed birthplace.

Flip ahead to the 6th of December 1992. Hindu zealots surround Babri Masjid and eventually destroyed it. Riots break out all over India, especially in Mumbai, both Hindus against Muslims and vice versa. I imagine that the scene in Slumdog Millionaire, when the young protagonist and his brother watch their mother die during a Hindu attack on their slum, is based off these riots, especially since Rama makes an appearance as a little kid covered in blue paint (Rama does have a very distinctive colour). In 2002, a train in Gujarat was destroyed along with its 52 Hindu activist passengers who subsequently burned to death...

Flip to the present day. After a long and drawn out High Court case, the judges made their decision to split the land...mature indeed...but not without accepting in their ratio, that Lord Rama was born on that spot. Lack of separation between Church and State is potentially at it's least comfortable here. Anyway, we stayed up late talking about religion!

Having woken up very late, I headed to India Gate, a WWI memorial in the centre of Delhi. I then walked to Purana Qila, built by Sher Shan, who briefly defeated Humayun (of the Mughal empire), but later suffered a similar fate at Humayun's hand. The Persian design fails to escape the limits of local resources in that the red sandstone and marble were mostly available at the time, but it creates an idiosyncratic mix of Persian and Indian influence showing the chronological sediments left by each influential empire to have passed through the region. I continued on to Humayun's tomb which has a very similar archelogical history and in fact, was the basis for the Taj Mahal. By that point, it was already getting quite late so I headed to Lodi garden where I met Anjli.

A short nightime walk around Lodi garden reveals plenty of couples sitting silently under a tree, on a bench or walking hand in hand. Anjli told me that, since both men and women live with their parents until married, pre-marital sexual activity is frowned upon and difficult to hide, so Lodi park becomes the Hamstead Heath of Delhi....only with a more heterosexual orientation.

We had a very filling dinner on Connaught Place, a large roundabout with some of Delhi's main shops, then stomachs full and cramping, we did the unmissable walk from India Gate to the President's Residence and Parliament along Rajpath.

Waking up late...again...I finally got my ass to the New Delhi train station to book my train tickets for the next week. I took the metro which was a welcome break from the autorickshaws (a mode of transport which I believe deserves a post of its own) and attempted to head to the first floor where, according to my Lonely Planet guide, the International Tourist Bureau should be. Unfortunately I was on the wrong side of the station and worst of all, I didn't know it. I wondered back and forth, being the only white guy there, I was sure this was wrong. A guy at the gate told me that it used to be upstairs, but it's closed...LIES I told him. Unsurprisingly, he was insulted. I had been told that I would be told rubbish by tickets touts, so my guard was up, potentially more so than it needed to be.

Eventually I found the Tourist Facilitation Office - hmm that doesn't sound right - they said to go to platform 1. I crossed the bridge across 16 platforms. If you haven't walked across 16 platforms worth of bridge, try it, it's a suspiciously long route. Nothing useful on platform 1. Confused. Lost. Annoyed. Oh wait, a sign! The tourist office! But where? There's no arrow. Angry. Walk around for another 30 minutes. Outside. Inside. Livid. Demoralised.  Finally I found it. Having not had breakfast, it had 14:00 and I. was. hungry. I sorted my tickets as quickly as possible, jumped on a pre-paid autorickshaw and headed to Jama Masjid.

Opposite India's largest mosque is a labrynth of alleyways littered with shops, restaurants and what felt like the entirety of the population of India. Karim's is a famous restaurant, right at the entrance, where they have recipes from the Mughal empire that have been passed down from generation to generation and landing in this 1913 established restaurant. I ordered a Butter Chicken curry and a Plain Naan and stuffed my face. Though it's customary to eat with your hands in India, and I did (and do), I probably erred on the side of disgusting Western pig. I was too hungry to wait.

Jama Masjid was an impressively large mosque. And the Red Fort behind it was also worth seeing, again built as part of Mughal Empire by Aurangzeb, it's what it says in the name...a red fort.

I made my way through Old Delhi, which was more than an assault on the senses, a sensicide if you permit, where dichotomous smells fill your nostrils and slap your face: petrol fumes and frying oil, sweat and jasmine perfume, rotting carcasses and spiced panni puri. The air was incredibly rich, but muggy and damp. The streets were alive with more life than the bacteria filled mouth of a bottom feeder. Old Delhi is an experience not to be missed.

Anjli had recommended I go to Hazram Nizrat close to Humayun's Tomb on Thursday night as the shrine becomes lively with dance and music around sunset. I made my way through more backstreets that got thinner and more crowded as I went deeper into this urban religious crypt. Drums a blazing, singers a moaning and plenty of pilgrims a praying to a central shrine on which they would place small fuschia petals on a tomb inside, I stayed only briefly.

I finally made it back to Anjli's after a long day. She got dressed for her big night at a party starring none other than India superstar Amitabh Bachchan. I got a takeaway curry from the Haldiram's next door (essentially a McCurry) and watched Mean Girls. I am not ashamed.