The first journey is always the most exciting one, and I'm about to start my first journey in the blogosphere. It's something I'd eschewed for while, but now that I've completed another journey, writing my first travel app, I thought it was about time I told the world about it.
Those who know me well are aware of my fascination with Delhi and India, they don't necessarily understand why, but they're happy to let me be. I've contributed now to four Lonely Planet guidebooks on India and thought it was about time that I should write one of my own. And this application gizmo is just the template to do it with.
Surprise, surprise, it's on Delhi, some 200+ entries with well over 1000 photographs, mostly my own. All this comes from my 20 or more visits to Delhi over the last 15 years and I can with a complete lack of modesty say that I know the city as well as anybody, well, almost. The app contains more than your average guidebook with quite a few places of interest or activity not covered anywhere else.
The guide leads you through Delhi's old cities (seven of them) and visits places where its rulers, emperors and political leaders lived, were imprisoned, died or were assassinated. It joins the crowds at the Red Fort and walks the paths of emperors, explores the British imperial capital of New Delhi where the architects squabbled over its design, looks where battles and aftermath of the 1857 uprising took place, and marvels at the victory tower, the Qutb Minar, that once might have been the tallest building in the world.
The guide finds the odd and exotic like the International Museum of Toilets, a hospital just for birds, the man who cuts people with razor blades to cure their illnesses, the world's longest bookmarket, the spacecraft that India's only cosmonaut travelled in, and a 250-year-old observatory built in stone.
There's information for several self-guided tours or contact details so that you join in a guided tour that places history in context or reveals where the dancers, puppeteers and sword-swallowers of Delhi live.
Want it? It's called Delhi Expert now published by Sutro Media and available through the iTunes and Android stores. Price, $4 99, it's a steal when there are others for several dollars more.
