Delhi old and new, from rickshaws to gelato shops

Hidden Delhi

DELHI, India — One of the things I was most looking forward to was Avnish Puri's "Hidden Delhi" tour that he offers twice a week starting at 6 a.m.

We spent most of our first day in New Delhi, the British-built part of the city with wide streets, government buildings and lots of greenery.

Avnish took us to Old Delhi, founded 350 years ago by Muslim emperor Shah Jahan. Here the remains of old havelis (mansions) can still be found among the sea of humanity that works and lives in its narrow streets and alleys.

But, first, a detour: Avnish drove us to what he calls "the lungs of Delhi," a patch of forest, a few blocks away from our guesthouse, off a four-lane road and around the corner from a Sikh temple.

Here, in a clearing, we found monkeys, pigs and cows roaming wild, an outdoor zoo of sorts, in the middle of a crowded and busy city.

Bicycle rickshaws are the way to get around in Old Delhi, where the streets are too narrow for cars.

Avnish parked and found us two rickshaws, one for himself and another guest, and another for my husband and me.

Our driver spoke no English, so we kept our eyes on his red- and green-checked turban and communicated with smiles as he pedaled standing up most of the time, dodging carts full of bananas or bricks and cows loaded down with blocks of ice and sacks of rice.

He pedaled past sweet shops and spice sellers and along Chandni Chowk, a stifling hot and noisy bazaar that was once a grand, processional thoroughfare that led from Jahan's Red Fort to his mosque, Jami Masjid.

Indians love sweets, and one of their favorites is jalebi, crisp coils of dough fried in hot oil and doused with honey.

I tried making a few at a breakfast cafe where Avnish eats three times a week after a man making them in the window offered to show me how.

My coil-making technique needed work, but it was a good excuse to go inside and sample our first Indian breakfast.

A boy set down tin plates. We ate a few of the jalebi along with puffed, deep-fried breads, called poori, which we filled with spicy curries and a sweetened wheat paste.

Tea at the Imperial our first day had been a relaxing respite from the 95-degree heat, but sitting here, across from a woman wearing a bright yellow sari with a matching diamond nose and toe rings, I felt like I was in India.

Your laundry's journey

If you stay in a hotel or a guesthouse in India, here's what happens to your laundry:

Your hotel delivers it to an outdoor hand laundry like the one hidden in a clearing around the corner from the national government buildings in New Delhi.

Here, a group of men, women and children work in cement pits shaped like small swimming pools.

Everyone has his or her job to do in each stage of the washing and drying cycle, starting with pre-washing and moving on, assembly-line style, to washing, rinsing, drying and finally ironing.

Ironing takes the strongest workers and the most skill.

The women use oversized cast-iron irons, kept warm with a layer of hot coals stored in the bottom.

The irons weigh about 20 pounds each and have wooden handles. Needless to say, the creases last.

Like most big Asian cities, Delhi is a city of entrepreneurs. Not everyone in India works in call centers or high-tech jobs, as some U.S. media reports could lead you to believe. And not everyone is poor.

More typical of the middle-class young Indian today is Deepak Kumar, 22, whom I met outside Kasa Gelato, where he works in a fashionable New Deli shopping area called the "N Blocks."

He has a college degree and once worked in a call center. The money was good, but the pressure was intense to meet nightly quotas, and Kumar, like many in India, worry that U.S. companies that have outsourced jobs here will eventually move them elsewhere where labor is even cheaper.

Now he works 12 hours a day serving watermelon and pineapple-flavored ice cream to well-to-do shoppers in hopes that his company will promote him to a management job in one of its high-end restaurants.

He makes about $2,100 a year at the gelato shop, about three times India's per capita income, but still, it's not enough for him to afford to move from his parents' house and support a wife.

"India is becoming more expensive, day by day," he told me. "Money is everything."

Dengue fever

A few minutes before I was to leave Seattle for the airport, I opened the New York Times and saw a report about a dengue fever outbreak in Northern India, including Delhi.

I panicked and did a quick Internet search for more information. The warnings were to take precautions that I had already planned, including wearing mosquito repellant during the day and at night.

As it turned out, this year's strain of dengue (it happens every year around this time, right after the monsoon season) is a mild one, one that can cause high fever but doesn't lead to brain hemorrhages.

More than 800 in Delhi have been reported infected and at least 20 have died, but that needs to be put in perspective in a city of 16 million.

The Times of India played the story on Page 3 of its Sunday editions, giving front-page play instead to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's visit.

I've been wearing a mosquito repellent with sunscreen and so far haven't had any problems with mosquitoes.

Hold the beef

There are 56 McDonald's in India, and not a one of them serves beef.

The cow is considered sacred among Hindus, and most people in India don't eat beef. But they still love to go into an air-conditioned McDonald's, as evidenced by the crowds I saw inside the chain's restaurant on Janpath Road, across from the Imperial Hotel. There were a few foreigners, but most of the customers were Indian.

Among the menu choices: The Chicken Maharaja Mac, a two-patty chicken sandwich that sells for about $1.30; a Veg Pizza McPuff, a vegetable patty with potatoes; and soft ice cream with no eggs.