How to Travel in New Delhi

If you are a tourist, I guess, you are going to have a bit of a tough time in India, if you land up at the New Delhi airport. But I am going to talk about traveling within the city today. I will devote more time writing about touristy places and how to negotiate them in Indian cities. That should be another article.

Anyway, so, let us talk about traveling in New Delhi, using public transport. These days, it has become a bit easier to travel in certain districts of the city because of the extended Delhi Metro network but there have been reports of glitches, of the metro not working, sometimes the trains getting very late, sometimes they have been so over-crowded that people haven't had enough space to put their feet on the ground.

If you look at the map of New Delhi, here http://bit.ly/5dpll7 -you would see that if you had to travel from the famous Qutab Minar in Mehrauli, which lies at one of South Delhi to Chandni Chowk, which lies in Old Delhi, it would be a distance of 25-30 kilometers or about 20 miles. This particular stretch does have the Metro at some places but taking the Metro would not be too beneficial to you.

Suppose, you did not have enough money to take a cab or you were someone who lived here and had to travel in the city or you wanted to take the public transport for fun, then this article would help you. You would find a direct bus to Chandni Chowk but the route would be quite circuitous and the bus might be full of people. You might also find traffic snarls along the route. So, what do you do? You could take Bus Route 502 to Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi but the bus takes a long route and gets crowded. So, you could travel taking short routes. You could go to Saket. Take an auto-rickshaw to go there. That's close by on the map and take Bus Route 500 to take you to Super Bazaar in Connaught Place. At Connaught Place, you could get down at the bus stop before Regal Cinema and take a bus to New Delhi Railway Station. From there, you could catch the Metro to take you to Old Delhi station. From the Old Delhi station, you could walk down or take a cycle rickshaw too.

Such journeys are nice because they help you understand the city better. They also give you a slice of life around you. And it also saves you time.

Enjoy!