From the "Separated by a Common Language" Files

Perhaps our favorite picture from the most recent trip to Delhi, stretching the limits of the zoom on the iPhone camera. Like most images from this trip, this is not at all a great piece of photography. But... "Delhi Milk Scheme"? If you've got a scheme going on, why advertise it as the name of your store?

All India

More speeding-taxi photography.

Separation of Church and Taxi

Taxis in India almost always have a nice assortment of religious icons and such on the dashboard and hanging from the mirror. This taxi was one of our favorites. Relatively understated as these things go, and the Durga (I think?) Riding a Tiger sculpture is a fantastic touch.

Lodi Gardens

On our last day in Delhi, we reserved a bit of the afternoon for tourism. We'd seen the major attractions on a previous trip, and were feeling a bit beat, so we went to relax in the Lodi Gardens. The gardens are a nice park not terribly far from our hotel, and would be ripe for some nice photos if we could have been there under different lighting conditions, and if the batteries on our camera didn't die that day leaving us with only the iPhone's acceptable but limited camera.

Anyway, we did not realize before arriving that the gardens are in fact the grounds of a series of tombs of 15th-Century rulers, which are the kind of thing you just bump into in some parts of the world. The other notable feature of Lodi is a multitude of young couple necking, occupying each niche in the old tombs and in many of the marginally secluded spots in the surrounding area.

RIP Delhi Police Cables

Another snapshot, but I was amused by what appears to be a makeshift shrine at the tomb of the Delhi Police Cables, whatever that means.

Connaught Place

Connaught Place is, I guess, the commercial heart of New Delhi. Old Delhi has more atmospheric bazaars. And New Delhi has a fair number of weird (to our eyes) shopping enclaves that are sort of a cross between high-street shopping and a strip mall. But the Connaught area, a series of concentric circles and radial avenues emanating from a circular park, is the main, central shopping district with multiple blocks of streets lined with shops and such. And yet, it's not much to look at.

Kake Da Hotel

A pause from the marginal photography for a day of marginal snapshots. But we thought this restaurant, the Kake Da Hotel in Connaught Place, was worth documenting.

Above is the view directly behind my table. Staff photographer visible in the mirror, drenched in sweat, snapping the picture with his phone, and not looking anywhere near as dapper as the presumed founder of the restaurant in the garlanded portrait. Below, the kitchen area, immediately in front of our table and looking out on the street in a truly radical take on the "open kitchen" philosophy. The food was really good, if a bit challenging to eat cleanly.

Also, because it is tiny and there are few tables, we shared with a guy who claimed to be a relatively successful Indian blues guitarist, who was very excited to talk about blues and rock with an American guy and name all the famous guitarists who had
come to India back in the hippie era, before moving on to discussing Syria and international relations and such, about which your correspondent artfully engaged without ever mentioning his profession as a diplomat. So overall, Kake Da Hotel obviously gets five stars for food, five stars for ambiance, and a bonus five stars for clientele. Highly recommended.

Essential India

It wouldn't be a trip to the developing world without a picture of someone carrying something ridiculously large and/or heavy on a bicycle. Voila!

More Highway Photography from Delhi

India Some More

We are back from another inadvertent layoff! Sorry, etc.

In the meantime, our day job was keeping us away from our far more important editorial duties here at the Holla with, among other things, a trip to India. As a day-job trip, we mostly ran around to meetings with various interesting people in government and industry to discuss U.S.-India trade relations. The staff photographer was mostly limited to what he could shoot out of the taxi window on the way to meetings, which is apparently a skill that has atrophied some since our days in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, over the next week or maybe more, a few of the random hits from the great field of misses in five days in New Delhi.