New Delhi day 2 part 3

After we enjoyed our lunch at the Lodi Garden restaurant, we debated on whether to go to the zoo (which may be closed) or heading to the India Gate and heading back to woodcastle afterwords. In the end India Gate won, and we headed out to argue with another tuk-tuk driver over the price of our ride. Whatever a tuk-tuk driver says first is always too much. Its your job to act offended and upset that he would insult you with such a price. You have to talk them down as much as possible, and even after talking them down to a fair price, we usually ended up with a much higher price than if it were metered.  I call this the "white tax".
Our driver drops us off directly in front of the tourist police, who are on hand to try in vein to dispel some of the touts in the area. "Tout" is the term westerners (Europeans) use to describe the hawkers and panhandlers that offer a service. A step above bums, because they offer to take your picture, or sell you some useless crap for a price. Any tourist area is filled with touts in India. They weep down on us like vultures to a rotting corpse, and even when the tout directly in front of the line selling the same exact item as everyone else behind him gets a negative response, the rest still pile up to ask if you want to buy theirs.
The main "service" at the India gate is to take your picture. Its very similar to walking into an amusement park like Kings Island. You walk in, and suddenly some caring worker comes up and offers a free picture that won't take but a second. Of course, a few minutes later someone has a print for you, then they hassle the shit out of you to buy the print. When we say no to one, another one comes up right behind asking, "Take your picture for free?"
Now I would like to take a second to explain "we." When I say "we" in reference to touts, tuk-tuks, ordering food, etc. understand that I mean me. Women are not given the same standing in India as men, so everything... EVERYTHING... goes through me. It reminds me of the episode of futurama when they go back in time to the Roswell New Mexico ufo crash. Leela and the Professor try to go and buy a microwave from a store (before microwaves were available for sale) and the salesman says to the professor "Sir, your wife is hysterical. So I will direct this to you."
So I spend a good half of the day saying "No." or my new mantra "No thank you." saying both while using negative body language, meanwhile Mandy follows behind smiling as if floating on a cloud. I think during the entire time in India, she was only hassled three times. I was hassled constantly.
After passing through the line of touts, we make it to the India gate.

Its very impressive.  Its size is pretty hard to determine, so I paid someone 10 rupees to climb up some scaffolding to show its size.

Just kidding, he did that for free. I'm not entirely sure what work they were doing, but they were doing some sort of work on the India Gate while we were there.  Probably in anticipation of the Commonwealth games. We took several pictures of the gate, so enjoy.

Here one of two fountains that flanked the gate, and as we took these pictures, people were taking pictures of us.

This was a smaller building behind the gate...

It wasn't tourist season in India while we were there, so we kept a running count of the other white people we saw, and the final count for New Delhi was approximately 12. That's 12 other white people in a city with a population around 18 million.  Yeah, we stood out. We were almost celebrity status, especially with Mandy's piercing and my long hair and goat-tee. Strangers would take our pictures constantly, and would also ask if they could pose with us in pictures.  We would gladly strike a pose, and they would walk away with a huge smile.  It has been fun! I wonder how many Indian scrap books we will end up in!
The India gate is impressive, but it is just a gate. After a few minutes there, you have pretty much done all you can there, so we left pretty quickly. We passed by the same touts who hassled us on the way in, and they hassled us again on the way out.  A teacher asked us for money for books, which wouldn't be the first in India we would later find out.  Men pulled back on rubber band helicopters and would let them fly and point them out as they drifted down to catch them, and  then try to sell them to us.  This wouldn't be the last time we would see that either.
One direction of the gate points towards the presidents house, which we wanted to see, but were far too tired to walk to.  As you can see, it isn't close...

Its the one in the middle off in the distance. The other direction from the presidents house, and practically in the shadow of the India Gate (one of the main tourist attractions to New Delhi) was a tent city.

Tent cities are incredibly common, as well as shanty towns and housing built from the most basic of supplies. There are far too many makeshift housing for it all to be made up of untouchables, and they are all over the city in good and bad areas.  All the construction sites I saw had shanty/tent housing surrounding the developments.  The workers live on the job site, work on the job site, and eat on the job site. I can only imagine that when they are done, they just move to another job site and build another temporary house.
We pass by the tent city and walk back to the metro.  Its only a hop, skip, and jump back to our station. Then our short walk back to woodcastle to rest in safety and solitude.  The internet? Taken, again.