Think Shopping, Think The Connaught

If you had a few hours to spend for your very last shopping on your very last day in New Delhi, consider heading down to a place called The Connaught just like what we did on our very last day in New Delhi.

After returning to New Delhi from the UNESCO site Qutab Minar, we decided that we shouldn’t go back to the comfort of the hotel room right away – not too soon. Instead, we flagged down a Tuk Tuk and asked to be sent to The Connaught.

The Connaught as seen on the Google Map looks more like a coliseum with a patio in the middle. In real, it is actually a cluster of shop lots with beautiful French architecture arranged to form a round circle with a huge park in the middle.

New Delhi might be a bazaar city but you wouldn’t really see any of those over sized shopping malls that we are so pampered with here in KL – at least not in the areas that I went to.

Most of the things that they sell at bazaars in Delhi are of those bundle types so forget about scooping in a whole bundle of original Prada or Gucci bags into your luggage and boast about them when you come back to your home country later.

The first thing that caught our attention the moment we got off the Tuk Tuk was the big yellow M that glowed so invitingly over a backdrop of red.

McDonald’s!!

We had never been so happy to see a big M that suddenly came into existence at a place that we had least expected.

After tolerating myself with all the spicy and heavily-curried foods since we set foot in India about a week or so ago, it was so good to see a McDonald’s again especially after we were disappointed by the one that we found in Jaipur.

One thing you gotta know about McDonald’s in New Delhi or probably the whole of India is that, they don’t serve Big Mac or anything with beef.

You know how India is heavily Hindu and that eating a cow in Hindu is like eating your own mother or something. It is considered a holy animal.

Instead, they kicked Big Mac out of the menu and replaced it with a Chicken Maharaja-Mac. But then, if you think you can escape curry by coming to McDonald’s in India, think again.

Even the color already tells it all. I did not particularly like it, probably because I had had enough of curry and there were smells of ingredients that didn’t quite go well with my taste buds at that point in time.

So, after gobbling down the foods like there was no tomorrow, we trailed along the blocks of shops to see if there was anything at least worthy to check out and to stop by for.

FATE seemed to have brought us to The Connaught when most of the shops were having SALES.

The Connaught might be the place in New Delhi with the most number of sports shops all concentrated in one small area so being so-called avid runners ourselves, we couldn’t be happier to see there were sales all over.

I’ve been trying to find a pair of Adidas running tights at an affordable price in KL for quite some time but quite every time I looked at the price I’d question myself if it really was worth it. I’ve never seen any of them with a price of less than a hundred bucks so the answer always came back as NO.

Here at The Connaught I found one priced at about RM50 after discount so – there was no way I would ever let it go off my hand or I’d go back to Malaysia and spend the rest of my life feeling sorry.

In the end, me and my travel buddy Audrey had our own share of purchases so never mind the holes in our pockets, the evening had never really gone wasted. We were both happy so that was the only thing that mattered to us at least at that point in time. LOL!

We continued strolling, making a complete circle around and stopping here and there along the way to see whatever there was to see.

The Connaught seemed to be a place of great escape from the bustling streets and smothering crowds and of course the burning hot sun of Delhi which was at its most intense since it was July.

I love Delhi people, there’s no doubt about it. For me they are some of the most wonderful people that I’ve ever met in all my travel trips so far but there are times when I just want to go somewhere where I can have a little bit of space away from all the people or even the sight of them.

There seemed to be much lesser people at The Connaught, probably because it was more like a place for the middle/upper-class which was evidenced by the way they dressed and carried themselves. They looked – modern and somehow prosperous contrasting to most people that I see on other streets of New Delhi.

Here and there we’d come across a spread of books being sold at very reasonable prices. I was both amused and impressed to see that most of them were motivational books. For me, it was reflective to the fact that there’s always hope for life improvement and better future for the people of India.

One of the books that caught my eyes had STAY HUNGRY, STAY FOOLISH as its title. I had almost bought it but the idea of having to pay extra for extra luggage had prompted me to put it back to where it had been.

It would be long after I came back to KL that I found out how famous the book is – for it was the book that inspired the late Steve Jobs to do so well in his career and life.

So, after making a full circle around at the Connaught, we flagged a Tuk Tuk down and asked to be sent back to reality, to Pahar Ganj where our hotel was located. It wasn’t long before we returned to being two dots in the ever crowded Bazaar Street.

We were indeed back to reality.