The Indian road system has been described as complete anarchy, but this is far from the truth. There is a distinct and inviolable pecking order in an Indian rush hour. Here, even more than elsewhere, size really matters. Buses are top of the heap, followed by trucks, taxis and cars. (Those with official number-plates, flags, or just a conspicuous absence of dents, take precedence in this last group). Then come the legions of whining mopeds, motorised Bajaj rickshaws, horse-drawn carts, cycle trishaws and rickshaws. At either extreme of the hierarchy are a) cattle and z) pedestrians.

Cows are the only creatures that can hold their own in the Delhi rush hour. A couple of drowsy, cud-chewing bovines, sleeping in the middle lane of Rajiv Chowk, will soon become an island of relative safety for herds of scampering office-workers trying to escape the traffic-bound confines of Connaught Place. Red lights mean nothing, zebra crossings mean less – though there is a tradition that they signify free (ie. government-sponsored) funerals. Amongst the terrifying mayhem of the Delhi rush-hour only cows are sacred.

Travel in Delhi might be slow, noisy, sweaty, polluted and nerve-wracking but it can never be boring. To the newly arrived visitor the streets of the great Indian cities are living museums and, whether you choose to browse them on foot or to be shuttled around by trishaw, the one thing you will need is an ample supply of time. You stop one of the cycle trishaw riders in the ‘backpacker ghetto’ of Pahar Ganj and, after a moment’s cursory haggle for form’s sake (you can always tip afterwards but at least you have established a fair rate) you set off through the back streets towards Chandni Chowk bazaar. This is a ride through the heart of Old Delhi and it constitutes what is quite probably one of Asia’s greatest urban adventures.

The trishaw rider weaves skilfully through the tangled mass of humanity, animals and battered Tata metalwork and you cruise past saffron-robed sadhus, trading blessings for alms in the shade of a venerable banyan tree. A paan (betel nut) vendor sits cross-legged in his box-like stall. Next door a coal fire and a battered aluminium pot are the tools of trade of a purveyor of the deliciously spicy chai masala tea and a roadside barber plies his trade with just a bar of soap and a few old blades. Off-duty trishaw wallahs sleep stretched out across their ‘vehicles’ amid a small herd of similarly off-duty draught oxen.

Shortly after exiting the little narrow alley of Farash Khana the roofs of the shop-houses are split by the minarets of Jama Masjid where the inhabitants of the Muslim quarter petition an improvement to their lot on a wing and a prayer. Further on you pass the Gauri Shankar Temple where the Hindus have done the same for the last 800 years, and the Digambar Temple where the Jains perform charitable works on injured pigeons.

Delhi, like everything else in India, is caught in an endless round of reincarnation and
some of the most impressive evidence of previous incarnations lies at the end of Chandni Chowk. Above the bleating taxis and the bobbing heads of rickshaw boys the Red Fort appears like an ancient, rusting battleship left high-and-dry on the banks of the Yamuna River. Built in 1648, at the height of the Mughal Empire, the collection of parks and palaces that are confined within the sandstone battlements offer an escape from the clamour of the bazaar.
In the old days the Mughal Emperor would parade out daily through the Lahore Gate to answer the prayer call. His vehicle of choice was a huge white elephant. It is easy to imagine that, even four hundred years ago, it was only such a creature that could find its way across the hustling traffic of Old Delhi.

I wake in the chill early morning haze and, freeing my feet from the tangle of four or five blankets and the now tepid dead-body warmth of the hot-water bottle, I reluctantly slide out of bed. I crank the gas heater up to full power – its warmth is a mixed blessing since the gas bottle leaks just enough to oblige me to keep a window cracked through the night. I dress crouched on the floor in front of the heater and then peel the curtain back and peak out. It is still dark outside but I can see the glitter of heavy frost on the ground. The entire experience reminds me of days – so long ago that I hesitate even to attempt the maths – when I would wake in the early winter mornings of northern England to dress for school. (The reluctance for school is probably the second reason that I don’t attempt the maths!). Those icy mornings are probably one of the primary reasons for why I hit the road in the first place.

Thinking back on this I muse about the strange twists of fate that have brought me to this ungodly wakening in the dark wood cabin of a forty year old houseboat on Lake Dal, high in the Kashmiri Mountains. It is all very well to drift on a wing and a prayer and place everything in the lap of the gods. It is one of the luxuries of a year on a round the world trip that I am free for once to allow myself a bit of spontaneity. But then again upon arrival in Delhi, with no further plan and with a couple of weeks to kill before my first assignment, I found that the gods had decreed that all the southbound trains would be full. They further gave me an almost irresistible rate (after heavy haggling) and an easy path to the frozen north. For an hour or so we sat on the plane in Delhi waiting for fog to lift at Srinagar, the Kashmiri ‘summer capital’ in the foothills of the Himalayas. It seemed that the gods reneged on the deal after all but eventually we touched down amid the barbed-wire, cloaked Kalashnikov packing soldiers and Russian armoured cars of Srinagar airport.

Now I was waking at dawn to meet my guide Fayas and take a boat through the tangled labyrinth of foggy canals to the Lake Dal vegetable market. This amounts to the Kashmiri stock-market.The floating pontoon jetty was frosted and slippery as I climbed into the shikara (a Kashmiri version of the gondolas of Venice) and sat back in the soft cushions nursing a warm cup of coffee. Kashmiris have a wonderful and unique invention for dealing with the cold: beneath their voluminous robes they carry a kongi. This is a terracotta pot inside a wicker basket and it is used as a sort of mini barbecue with hot coals inside. But nothing is cooked on a kongi (although it is also the source of fuel for recharging shisha pipes). Instead it is carried around under the robes and keeps the local people wonderfully warm on these frigid winter mornings.

It took about forty minutes for Fayas to paddle us through the labyrinth of houseboats and down a narrow backcountry canal to the vegetable market. At first appearance it was like any other vegetable market, apart from the serene way in which the shikaras of traders and buyers wafted elegantly around and among each other. But the serenity was shortlived. Within the course of half an hour we saw several fights and in one case the combatants actually managed to fight while jumping from one boat to another. The war might have quietened down finally in Kashmir but it seems like the Lake Dal vegetable ‘stock exchange’ is once again the main battlefield.

Delhi is not a city that should be tackled in a rush; the city’s streets are among the world’s most congested and the real soul of Old Delhi only betrays itself to those who take time to entangle themselves in its web. It has been said that if you stand long enough on one of the busy corners in the exotic labyrinth of Chandni Chowk bazaar the entire world will eventually pass before your eyes.

While this may be an exaggeration the Indian capital is certainly one of the most enthralling places in the world for people watching: through the crowd come old sadhu holy men, begging for alms; statuesque Sikh mountain-men, who look half-dressed without guns on their shoulders and knives in their belts; dusky Rajastani beauties who flash kohl-darkened eyes from under semi-transparent shawls; fair skinned Kashmiri girls walking with tall elegance; and scrawny Brahmin cows, abusing their prerogative for right-of-way through the entire crowd.