No, YOU'RE a Manus

Short Version:
Metro, mosque, moustaches

Long Version:
That Delhi's Metro is awesome is a fact which may already have been mentioned more than just once.
It caters for folks from all walks of life, and endeavors to level the playing field a little bit for those that fortune/genetics/the gods have not favored by posting signage (mmmmm... delicious signage) instructing travellers to give up their seats for the disabled and the elderly. Given the seethingness of Delhi, and the enormosity of the population, and the dog-cannibal struggle for survival and/or advantage in which all those millions of people are engaged on a daily basis, you'd be forgiven for expecting the seat-donating uptake to be low.
And you'd be right, except that the aged and the crippled know this is the case, and are fighting the fight on their own behalf (because realistically no-one else is going to do it for them):
They're not even a little bit shy about asserting their gammy right to seatedness.

A number of times we witnessed wrinklies, crazy people, and limping broken husks demand - and receive - a seat. Standard practise seemed to be:
1. Select target seat/sitter
2. Approach at high/low/gnarled speed
3. Issue high-volume request for seat while staring at sitter.
4. Repeat #3 while continuing to approach until sitter's resolve crumbles beneath the weight of attention and disapprobriation and shame and the knowledge that failure to move is likely to result in a lap-full of someone with dubious bladder control, and moving along occurs

The different Metro lines are identified by color. We rode mainly on Yellow and Blue Lines, and rode on them enough that we got to know the more intelligible of their announcements by heart. Somewhat surprisingly, the announcements were not uniform across the lines: the Blue Line woman was much more polite than her Yellow Line counterpart, politely yet authoritatively asking travellers to "Please stand away from the doors." Yellow Line Lady, on the other hand, bluntly demanded action: "Stand away from the doors."

We rode both Yellow and Blue Lines to get from our hotel to Chawri Bazar Station, which is the closest station to the Jama Masjid mosque complex. Not so close that the tuk-tuk drivers were prepared to offer the stoopid Westerners reasonable fares to get there, though, so we walked, down narrow streets past people performing their morning ablutions at roadside faucets, and the streets became narrower, and stinkier, and the people more and more downtrodden, and we started to wonder if maybe we should have just paid the 50 rupees, and then suddenly we were there, at the base of the flight of stairs leading up to the entrance arch, where a man who didn't use words took charge of our shoes, and another man gave Nene a robe to wear during our visit; a very fetching lime green one, with flowers printed on it.

The Jama Masjid complex was pretty awesome, with domes and towers and arches galore. There was a pond in the middle of the square, in which people and pigeons bathed faces, bodies, teeth, and beaks. The water was a similar shade to Janine's robe, so we weren't tempted to join in. We did, however, join the flow of people - mainly tourists - towards the southern tower, which on can climb. For a fee.

Before we got to the tower, though, Nene was conned into paying for taking photos of a small girl - largely through the girl's evil Fagan mother administering a beating (to the girl, not to Nene) for allowing an non-earning photo to have been taken.

And then we were into the tower, hard on the heels of a group of punks from some Baltic state, and hauling ourselves up the unevenly-spiralling red sandstone stairs, worn smooth by the passage of untold thousands of feets. At the top, a traffic jam. And massive views out across the domes of Jama Masjid and away into the hazy distance. Birds of prey wheeled in massive flocks around ghostly structures. Leaving was difficult, and not just because the stairs were blocked by upclimbers.

Once we'd reached the ground, returned the lime green draping cloth, reclaimed our shoes, and eaten our stolen samosas on the stairs, we set off into what turned out to be a veritable maze, replete with locked gates that were sometimes open and public ablutions blocks where we did wees as others showered*. This led us eventually to the market between Jama Masjid and the Red Fort. Lots of tacky crap was for sale. Lots of tacky people haggled for cheaper deals on tacky crap. Lots of jostling, lots of no-personal-space. Lots of had-enough-time-to-leave.

At the Red Fort, we joined the enormous queue, and waited patiently for all the thirty seconds it took an alert guard to spot us and hustle us away to our own, special, no-other-people, fifty-times-the-price queue, where we in turn were hustled by some fat lady who pinned Indian flags to us and demanded money to support the orphans. She really wanted more than ten rupees out of us, but we're cheaper than we are proud, and we didn't believe her orphan story anyway. Screw you, fat lying flag-pinning lady!

The coolest thing about the Red Fort is probably getting up on top of the massively thick walls that surround the place. We don't know for sure, because we weren't allowed to go up there. We looked at old buildings, and at empty canals and ponds. Basically a disappointing monument to faded glory. Why people list this as one of the top things to do in Delhi we'll never know, unless someone tells us.








* = In separate stalls. We weren't the showerheads.