Woodcastle served as our home base in New Delhi, and it is the nicest place we stayed in all of India without question. I can say that because I am writing this on the paper I purchased in Varanasi last night, while sitting on the bed of the last hotel we are staying in while in India.
The staff of woodcastle made us feel at home in a land so foreign and alien, it felt as if we were on another planet, certainly not Earth. Woodcastle was a home base to a city so huge and so busy that if you stop to think, you may get knocked down. Inside its walls we found our peace, comfort, and solitude.
Outside is where our adventures take place...
Let us take a moment to explore our room in woodcastle before venturing out into the city. We had a nice king size bed that consisted of two firm twins pushed tightly together, covered with a wool blanket, with two pillows. The bed and pillows were firmer than I was used to, because we have two layers of memory foam on our bed at home and two pillows as soft as warm butter. The bed was certainly comfortable enough to sleep soundly once I got adjusted to the time.
The bathroom was a very nice introduction to Indian bathrooms, as it had a western toilet, and a shower with its own water heater. Some of the bathrooms I would see later would have been quite a rude awakening, so I'm glad I was introduced to Indian bathrooms at woodcastle.
There were three buckets in the bathroom, two make for a bath tub; one 5 gallon bucket acts as the "tub" while the other pitcher inside it is used to pour water on yourself. The other bucket is for Indian wiping, because they don't use toilet paper in India (which is why you never shake left hands). Luckily, woodcastle supplied toilet paper, so I didn't have to learn how to wipe Indian style. Or at least, not at woodcastle.
The floor of the bathroom is the bottom of the shower. There is no entrance to the shower, the entire bathroom is basically a shower. There are three drains for the water to go into, one for the shower, one for the Indian wiping bucket, and one under the sink for any spill over.
That's basically the room, a place to sleep and a nice bathroom. We had a TV too, which had a refrigerator under it. The most important thing the room had was a very nice air conditioner and very strong fan. The electricity was constant in New Delhi, which means that we were nice and comfortable all day and night in woodcastle. At night we would watch our TV and try to guess what the hell the bollywood clips were supposed to be about. We never really figured it out though. One of the obvious ones that was my personal favourite was called
"bullshit" which is obviously about politics. Mandy and I both loved the promo for
Dabang (we called that video the "pants dance song")which we debated on watching in the theatre, but we decided to wait until its released with subtitles so that we can figure what is going on. lol!
Breakfast is free at woodcastle, with a choice of American, continental, or Indian breakfasts. We enjoyed the Indian breakfast several times... which we would eat in our room on the bed (Indian breakfast in bed, hooray!)
That is the safe and secure world of woodcastle, which is not why you are reading this though. You want to see the dirt, the grime, and the sublime India, right? Then lets venture outside, shall we?
When you leave woodcastle, you leave through 2 very nice wooden doors..
Those two doors are without question the nicest thing in the Alley. The alley we stayed on was a typical alley for the area. We had a mix of all types of people, from middle class to workers living in shacks in the alley. There was even our own pack of dogs...
The alley, like everything else in New Delhi and greater India was in a constant state of construction while we were staying there. Quite a lot of activity for such a compact little alley, but the noises never bothered us in our room. The only sound we really noticed in there was a man calling out selling something when he would walk by in the mornings. Here is a view down our Alley from the bigger road that we connected too..
What you can note in that picture is the stacks of bricks to the left, for building a house or something in the pit on the right. What I found interesting was how everyone who owned the cars on our alley would come out and clean them in the morning. They took pride in their cars, and didn't want the dust and dirt from construction to get on them.
There were a couple spots where workers were living in shacks in and around our alley, and they had children living with them. These children were so nice. They always smiled at us and waved and said "hi". Everyone in our alley was so nice and always smiling and nodding at us. Although it may look a bit shady, I never felt the slightest bit uncomfortable or at risk in this alley. Everyone was very nice.
At the end of our alley is where you meet with the first bout of tuk-tuk drivers and maybe a few rickshaw drivers. I must make two points here. One is that a "tuk-tuk" is an auto rickshaw, something Mandy thought some people may not know. Two is that every time Mandy says "rickshaw" she says "rick-a-shaw" even though she knows its wrong. She insists that "It sounds better". Cracks me up.
After avoiding the tuk-tuk drivers hassling us for a ride, we continue up our little road towards Pusa road, the closest major road to our little area of New Delhi. Here is the view of the road that leads to our alley, which we affectionately called "Mickey mouse road".
The reason we called that road "Mickey mouse road" was because of the landmark we used to find it on Pusa road.
Make sense now?
This is all leading away from woodcastle and towards the Karol Bagh metro station, which served as a starting point to most of our journeys. Here is a picture of Pusa road and the metro line, it was taken pretty early in the morning, so its not very busy yet.
The green and yellow vehicle on the left hand side is a tuk-tuk. They are all over the place in New Delhi.
This was the walk we would take everyday in Delhi, whether we were going north to the Red Fort, or south to the Lodi gardens. We would get east and west by taking the metro from our station, the Karol Bagh station on the blue line. Here is the station on Pusa road...
These are some of the people and places in our neighbourhood. Not a whole lot of story here, just the place we were when we weren't out exploring the sites of New Delhi. I'm going to put up a few more pictures just to show some of the things in the neighbourhood.
This is a view from the top of the station looking at some shops and things...
There was a market about halfway between our hotel and the metro. Unfortunately when I was out taking pictures in Karol Bagh, it was early in the morning and the market wasn't open. I had planed on getting pictures of it when we came back through India to return home, but that didn't work out.
As you can see, on the right side of this picture are closed shutters. Each of those represent a shop that would be open if it was later in the day. If you follow them down, they go as far as you can see. We never shopped there, as it was always super crowded. Now this part is important. You see the kid on the left obviously on his way to school, and you see how he is running? For that kid, and me, I need you to picture him in your mind doing a super cool double peace sign, and smiling HUGE like this :D ok? Because, as you can see, he is a little blurry in this picture, and that is because he saw my camera and was running to get in frame to strike a pose with two peace signs and a HUGE smile. He was not happy when he realised he didn't make it in time. I realised what he was trying to do and put the camera back up for him, but his mom grabbed him and made him stop being so goofy. SO please take a second and in your minds eye picture that kid with two awesome peace signs, and a totally rad smile! Thanks!
Ok, thats all for the update today. Tomorrow we will be going to the Lodi garden. Hope you are ready.
Peace and Love,
Allen
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