Incredible India -- Delhi

Sorting through the 600 pictures we took on our tour to India in September is a big job, and it's hard to choose just a few.  So I've decided to do three blog posts, one about each city we visited in India's so-called "Golden Triangle", where the main tourist attractions are.

We took the jet below out of New York City, on a direct flight to Delhi.  We went with our friends and travelling companions, David and Tresha Andrews.  We were lucky the plane wasn't very full and we were able to stretch out over three seats each on the 14-hour flight.  

The Sikh Temple below was the first attraction we went to see after landing in Delhi.

 Kent was especially intrigued with the construction workers who were digging a large hole with shovels and carrying the dirt away in bowls on their heads.  I guess that's one way to give lots of people jobs--don't use machines.

 Below is a view of the many bicycle rickshaws we saw in Delhi, but the scene below is much less chaotic than most of the roads were.  I think this was taken very early in the morning when there wasn't much traffic.

 One stop we made in Delhi was to the nice park surrounding Gandhi's tomb.

 Another stop was at the India Gate.

After our Delhi city tour we headed out towards the city of Jaipur.  The rest of the pictures are pretty representative of what we saw out the window of our bus the entire week we spent in India.

 Livestock was wandering freely through the streets of cities with populations in the millions.

The most common mode of transportation was the auto ricksaw, a three wheeled vehicle.  We saw as many seven or eight people crammed into them, though they were built to carry four comfortably.

 Piles of trash lined the streets wherever we went.  Billboards, signs and dangling power lines were everywhere.

 Shacks lined the roads, where people lived and had small shops.

 We couldn't believe it when we saw that if a city bus was full, men would climb on to the top of the bus to ride.  Our air conditioned and comfy tourist bus seemed empty and extravagant by comparison.

The impression was of masses of people, garbage and livestock.  There was almost always an interesting view to be seen out the window of the bus.  Most of the pictures of the streets were taken from the windows of our bus.

I think the only reason Delhi was a stop on our tour is because the airport is in Delhi.  It didn't seem to have a major tourist attraction besides the India Gate and Gandhi's tomb.