Day 11 - Social

The mammoth eighteen-hour train ride went by in a blast, in part because I was so tired I slept through most of it but also as the journey was pretty pleasant. The sight of people leaving the train from the opposite side to the platform never ceases to amuse me (is it really worth risking getting run over by a train just to save you from going up some stairs?) but the images of the people living in pretty desperate conditions on the side of the tracks as we approached Delhi is what will probably stick to my mind the most.

After making ourselves feel a bit more human with a shower and a fresh change of clothes, we grabbed some lunch at Karim’s (a legendary Old Delhi joint that fully lives up to expectation) and then set off to check the Qutub Minar, one of the oldest monuments in the city. Aside from the impressive architecture (which left us wondering how the hell they managed to build a seventy-metre high tower in the 1300s) and spacious layout of the site, the history behind one of earliest surviving mosques in the Indian subcontinent is pretty incredible.

My favourite episode related to Razia Sultana, the first and only lady Sultan of Delhi, who in the thirteenth century defied the notion that a woman was not fit to be in charge (glad we’ve sorted that one out!) and acted as a fair and powerful leader, who was eventually captured by her childhood boyfriend Malik Ikhtiar-ud-din Altunia due to an access of jealousy. After conquering Altunia’s heart while incarcerated, Razia was eventually released, they married and lived happily ever after. Well, until they both got captured and killed, but still!

The day ended at Social, a bar with a nice rooftop restaurant we had been to on our last stay in Delhi. There we had a few much needed beers (alcohol was nowhere to be found in Rajasthan) and met Richard, an American who is solo-travelling around India after a month in Europe. As we were making our way out, the downstairs bar looked quite lively so we agreed to have one last drink, which predictably turned into drinking until we got kicked out. As tomorrow is India’s Independence day, a “dry day”, they stopped serving alcohol at midnight but somehow managed to con us into having one last 16-year old Lagavulin that cost more than the rest of our bill. Somehow I think our decision-making powers may have been diminished, but were still better than Richard’s, who is planning on going to Ahmedabad tomorrow and still has not booked a flight. I guess we will all worry about all this in the morning…

Cheers,
João