Namaste India! This one has been on the bucket list for a long time. We arrived to an extremely smoggy New Delhi late at night and the next day set out to try some of our favourite cuisine.
Ignoring all warnings to avoid street food we stopped by a tiny kebab shop at the back of Karol Bagh metro station to try some Kati rolls. There was a small queue and it seemed popular so we ordered a butter chicken roll and a chicken seekh kebab roll. They tasted incredible. The butter chicken was tangy with a real chilli kick and the seekh kebab was juicy and spicy. All wrapped up in a buttery paratha bread.
Happily fed but wondering if we’d made the right decision, we headed back to the hotel. Luckily our Delhi street food experience didn’t come back to haunt us.
Street kids city walk
The following day we took a city walk around Old Delhi with a young boy from Salaam Baalak Trust. This is an NGO that provides support for street kids and working children in Delhi and Mumbai. Our guide was a former street child, taken in by the organisation and now studying at college, using money from the tours to fund his tuition.
His personal story was harrowing. At only 5 years old he was kidnapped from his home town and brought to New Delhi. He was abandoned behind the railway station, where he lived on the street until a few years ago. Now 16, he still has no idea who his parents are or where he came from and he will probably never find out. This is an altogether sad but common situation, in a country where a child goes missing every 8 minutes. It was difficult to listen to him talk so openly about it, but he was happy with the new family he had in Salaam Baalak Trust and the opportunity to make something of himself. A very brave and determined young boy.
Our time in Delhi was short and sweet. We got acquainted with the noise, the smog, the fantastic food and visited the famous Jama Masjid mosque and the Gurudwara Sis Ganj Sahib Sikh temple – where they were cooking up a giant batch of chapatis! Next stop…Jaipur.
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I have been living in and around Delhi for almost a decade. It’s one of my favorite cities.