Wongdhen House is a guesthouse in the north of Delhi. It’s in the Lonely Planet guidebook to India, which is how we found it.
It’s in a Tibetan Colony called Majnu Ka Tilla (Tibetan New Camp) off a busy highway and at night there is a steady stream of big trucks on the highway puffing their way into and out of Delhi.
Off the road and into the maze of narrow lanes, you wouldn’t know the highway was there.
Instead there is a kind of energy that is quite unlike India. It is of course, Tibetan. There are plenty of monks about, en route from or to Dharamsala, and there are stalls and shops and guesthouses.
If you have just landed in Delhi and want to get fixed up so you can travel easily in India, it is easy to buy an Indian cellphone (mobile phone) there (from Mr Mobile on the first floor of the Shangri-La Complex) and it’s recommended because having a cellphone makes it so much easier to book other hotels ahead as you journey across India. Take your passport and a passport photo when you go to buy a phone – you’ll need them for ID.
There are cyber cafes (there’s one right on the corner of the alley that leads to Wongden House) and you can also use the wifi facility with your own laptop at Liberty Cybercafe at the northern end of the main lane. It’s down the stairs at House 39. There is a good coffee shop just opposite as well and the wifi signal stretches across to the cafe if you want.
These all seem good reasons to stay in Majnu, and they are good reasons.
Wongdhen House is friendly and large and the restaurant is good value – eat a full meal (perhaps a vegetable sizzler or momos and rice with a bottle of water) for 100 rupees. The staff are very friendly and helpful and there is a money change facility right in the hotel.
Don’t get a room too near the back of the hotel, or risk the smell of the often-blocked drains out the back. The blockage may be from the adjoining building, so don’t blame Wongdhen.
Having avoided a room at the back, do take the time to look that direction to the lazy Yamuna river that is flanked by makeshift shacks and fields of vegetables.
All of this makes for a pleasant and laid-back introduction to the cacophony that is India.
Why not stay at Majnu? Well it all depends on your stomach for braving traffic.
Going from Majnu into the center of Delhi in daylight, it is easy to get an auto-rickshaw and then the metro. It’s six quick stations from there to the heart of Delhi.
Walk out of the hotel to the road and bargain for the right price – 30 rupees is about right for the auto-rickshaw ride to the metro. Ask to go the the metro station at Vidhan Sabha. From there you can get into central Delhi. You want platform 1.
The price for the journey will be 15 rupees and that will take you to Rajiv Chowk at Connaught Place.
So far so good. Now to get back to Majnu, and here is where it gets interesting. You want the Yellow Line for the trip back.
Avoid rush-hour unless you want to take part in Dante’s vision of Hell with seething bodies fighting for space on the trains.
When you exit Vidhan Sabha in the evening you will find only cycle rickshaws. They brave the highway – setting off against the traffic, then once in the flow, the driver will struggle for fifteen minutes in the semi-darkness to pedal you to the bridge over the highway oppposite Majnu Ka Tilla.
Walk over the bridge, duck into the alleyways, wend your way to Wongden House, eat in the restaurant, and thank your stars that the cycle rickshaw drivers know how to negotiate the screaming traffic on the highway.
Post Script
The Tibetans are not Indian citizens. They are refugees with refugee status, which adds a different dimension in the perception of their seemingly-established lives, as you walk about Majnu.
Wongdhen House
House Number 15-A Majnu Ka Tilla Delhi 54
wongdhenhouse@hotmail.com
Telephone 23816689, 23812896, 23815961, and 64155330
