Old Delhi- Temples and Mosques

​We started off the day with an earlier start than we'd been having over the last few days, getting up at 7:30 to be out by 8 am. 

Once we were up and ready, with the group all sorted we headed for the bus stop. Me and Alex hadn't yet tried the Indian buses as just looking at them made me feel hot and sweaty however the tour guide wished for us to get an 'authentic' feel for India. 
Once we got on the bus I automatically felt the heat hit me, not only was it pretty busy but the only breeze entering the bus was from the small windows that only went down one side of the bus (although the driver did keep the doors open for that extra bit of air). 
This bus did, however, teach us not to moan about the buses in London as they seemed god send compared to this. 

After sitting on the bus for what seemed like forever we got off just outside of the red fort although this was not the attraction of our old Delhi tour. 
We first visited a mosque which to enter we got special gowns to cover girls arms and boys legs and had to take our shoes off. The mosque had a pool of water in the middle of it and off to the side had what seemed to be the inside of this structure. 
The inside part of this place wasn't nearly as large as it had looked to be on the outside as it only went back a couple of feet which seemed strange to us as due to the extravagant outside courtyard you would have thought there would be the same for the parts that were covered. Although, the chandeliers inside and the brickwork/ arch ways were pretty amazing to look at. 

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​Once we had finished at the mosque we continued on the tour of old Delhi. 
We walked down some little alley ways seeing the way people within that area lived. These alley ways then lead to a Sikh temple which we entered to view part of a ceremony that was going on. 

To go in we had to remove both our shoes and socks and make sure our heads were covered. We found out that the action of taking off your shoes when entering a holy place is due to hygiene and not wishing to get their place of prayer dirty. 

When we got to the front of the temple we walked through some water and then entered. The temple was amazing in the sense of they had the carpet and the front alters which looked marble and gold, then there were three guys playing instruments beside it. 

The colours were mesmerising as they came out in golds and reds mainly. We also got to witness the volunteers within the temple who cook food, free of charge, for those who need it and can feed thousands of people in a single day. 
The whole temple was mainly run on volunteers who offered their time to give back to their community as not only did they have the cooks but they also had men who when people handed in their shoes would sit there and polish them for them as a free service. 
This culture of giving without receiving is pretty large here due to the beliefs of Karma and reincarnation.  

Following this, we walked a long the road heading to the Metro station as once again he wished for us to use the Indian styled transport although we were held off a bit due to another down pour of rain. 
Once we got on the Metro we found that they had two or three carriages that were specifically for women, which was pretty amazing as it can give the safety to those women in public places that may have previously felt to be daunting for them. 

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​When we got back to our hotel we had some time to relax and shower before we had to head to the station to get our sleeper train. 
When it reached 5 pm it was, however, time to head to the station. We got to the station and anticipated the extent to which this sleeper train could be as bad as we thought it would be. 

We got on the train and not to our surprise it was cramped and seemed that we may have entered a claustrophobic hell. Although we did become a bit calmer when the lights and the aircon came on. 
There were 3 beds one on top of each other in the bunk bed style and 2 lots of them either side of the little square block.
Our bags were chained to the bottom of the bed by a metal hook and we had to sleep with our bags underneath our heads. This journey in total was 13 hours. 
I had a very broken sleep due to the anxious thoughts that anyone could steal our stuff at any given moment and the fact that I wasn't too keen on the train and if it would break down or not.
Altogether though it was an experience and we got to see how people travel within India and it didn't turn out too bad.