On my second day in New Delhi I decided to go out and see the Lotus Temple. It’s located in South Delhi and so I decided to take the metro. This involved me changing metro lines, which was a long walk but was all done inside the metro station and was pretty painless.

Bahá’í house of worship

So the Lotus Temple is named because of its shape – but in fact it is called the Bahá’í house of worship. There is apparently one on each continent. Bahá’í is a relatively new religion, about 200 years old I was told. There is a quite informative information centre once you enter the ground and you can ask any questions you have.

The visitor centre was very quiet and relaxing. I would say most people head straight for the temple. It’s hard to find calm in New Delhi so I really enjoyed chatting with the staff in the visitor centre and appreciating the peace and quiet.

Hauz Khas Village

I took a slight detour to get here to go into Hauz Khas Village. It’s a small part of South Delhi that is more upscale and it’s a bit more quiet and less crazy that other areas. To get to it you can get off at the metro stop and walk through the rose garden.

As you can see this area is pretty quiet. It’s a scenic walk, but unfortunately beside the path is quite a lot of garbage. People seem to discard their rubbish into the bushes.

Hauz Khas was formed around a reservoir. Apparently it used to be a lot larger, but still there is a nice lake that you can walk around.

Traffic

When I got back to the metro station I decided to take a picture of traffic. This station is elevated and so it made it easy to walk across the overpass and take a photo.

Arrival

So after a nice flight from Munich I arrived in Delhi airport late last night. Even arriving at the late hour of just after midnight immigration was very slow. It took me just over 45 minutes to get through immigration and customs, even though I already had the ETA.

In fact – the line for people with ETA / eVISA was much longer than the line for people that had already got their VISAs in advance. It may be something to consider when you think about how you want to get your VISA. But – all in all – it was a fairly painless process once I got to the immigration officer.

Local Transportation

From the airport I had the hotel pick me up. This is because of the late arrival time and I did not want to have to deal with any touts trying to scam me by telling me that my hotel was closed or abducted by aliens at that late hour. The hotel pickup worked very well and the driver was waiting for me inside the terminal. The only downside is the price.

So today after breakfast I decided to see things that were close to me as I am staying in Connaught Place. I decided to take the metro. You can buy a smart card (similar to Presto in Ontario, Oyster in London, etc) and use this instead of having to line up to buy a token each time. Train are clean and efficient but the stations are quite far apart from each other. This means that at either end you are stuck with walking or taking a rickshaw / taxi / uber.

The Tomb

Humayun’s Tomb is thought to have inspired the creation of the Taj Mahal (in Agra) and was constructed in the mid-16th century. It has nice gardens around it and you can also walk along the walls of the structure. Its quite relaxing inside, away from the hustle and bustle of the street.

Uber

I decided to take Uber back. For one reason I wanted to try it with a foreign phone number to see if there were any difficulties. For another reason it was just slightly above $1US to get back to the hotel so although it is slightly more than the metro there is not a great deal of difference.

Traffic in New Delhi is chaotic and nobody seems to follow any kind of traffic laws. But that aside it was quite efficient to get back to the hotel.

Roundabouts seem to be quite problematic. There are lanes but drivers seem to think the best place to drive is on top of the white lines.