Field Report No. 24 · Work trip
Delhi India
Not a vacation, and we won't pretend it was. Melissa's anti-trafficking work took us to Delhi, and Jamey carried the camera. A dispatch from the old city.
Field Report
No. 24
Work trip
Delhi India
Worth knowing about.
- Coordinates
- 28.6139° N, 77.2090° E
- Traveled
- Early June 2018
- Kid-readiness
- We didn't bring the girls. This was a work trip, and Old Delhi in June heat is a grown-up assignment. Delhi with kids is doable; Delhi in June isn't.
- Where we stayed
- Shangri-La Eros New Delhi, central to everything the week needed, and after a morning in the old city the cold lobby air feels like a rescue.
- The non-negotiable
- Old Delhi before the heat gets a vote: Jama Masjid when the gates open, then the lanes behind it, where the painted haveli doors are.
- What we'd skip
- Trying to see both ends of the city in one day. Delhi traffic bills by the hour. Plan one neighborhood per half-day and let the rest go.
- Best season
- October to March. We went in early June because the work said so, and it was triple digits by lunch. Winter is the answer.
- Points & hacking
- American took us DFW to Delhi through Philly and London on one award ticket. Long-haul awards to India price better than almost anywhere we've flown.
28.6139° N, 77.2090° E
Delhi wasn’t a vacation, and we won’t pretend it was. Melissa’s anti-trafficking work took us there in June 2018, a week of meetings with the suppliers and social enterprises employing women out of the trade, and Jamey carried the camera everywhere the work went. The girls stayed home. This one’s a dispatch, not a guide.
The mornings belonged to the old city. Jama Masjid when the gates open, red sandstone already warm underfoot, and then the lanes behind it, narrow enough to touch both walls, painted haveli doors in blues and pinks that have been peeling beautifully for a century. A cycle rickshaw through Chandni Chowk costs almost nothing and is the single best seat in the city. Take it.
Delhi is everything at once. The heat, the horns, the color. There’s no easing into it; you just start.
By noon the heat won, every day, so the afternoons went softer. Lodi Gardens is a set of fifteenth-century tombs scattered across a public park, and locals stroll past them like they’re park benches. It’s the best free hour in Delhi. The Lotus Temple is worth the drive south just to stand in front of the thing, even when the line to go inside isn’t worth the sun.
The work itself isn’t a tourist stop, so we’ll keep it short: the week was spent with people building real jobs for women coming out of the worst industry on earth, and it rearranged how we think about why we go anywhere at all. Some of what Melissa builds at home traces straight back to those rooms.
Would we take the girls? Someday, and in winter. Delhi rewards a slower pace and a cooler month than we gave it. But if work or a layover hands you the city, take the morning in Old Delhi. It’ll outlast most vacations in your memory.
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