Avoid Delhi! Come here instead 🇮🇳

Two videos in one. The first fifteen minutes are the landfill mountain on the edge of Delhi — a skyscraper of garbage that the city’s trucks drive to the top of to tip, worked by pickers and by children collecting metal, with armed guards who tell Harry exactly how far he can go. The rest is Rishikesh in the north, which is the “come here instead”: Ganges rafting, dinner on a crane, and the yoga capital of the world.

He is careful about the first part in a way the title isn’t. He states that everyone watching is part of the problem, including himself, and gets his guide to explain why the waste problem is what it is rather than leaving it as spectacle.

Key moments

• [00:35] Stopped within thirty seconds at the chicken market and told to delete his footage. He declines, and says the man had a power complex rather than a reason.
• [01:07] Permission is negotiated to reach the landfill.
• [01:37] Trucks drive all the way to the top and tip. Thousands of crows. He says the smell is far less than he expected.
• [02:10] Armed guards, and a warning that going further will get him shot, which he takes at face value.
• [02:10] People and children go in anyway, to find metal to sell.
• [02:42] His guide on why the problem is this bad: recycling systems still developing, and 1.43 billion people. He also thinks the government is doing comparatively well.
• [03:12] A waste picker earns 300–500 rupees a day.
• [04:25] What he has collected is plastic bottles, sold on to a larger recycler.
• [04:25] Harry gives him about ten dollars — double a day’s earnings — and says on camera he wishes he’d had more on him.
• [05:02] A two-child policy is under discussion nationally.
• [05:33] How ice is made here, in a plant he compares to a snow park.
• [06:09] The residential area beside the landfill: a dying cow, children playing in waste, and houses looking onto it. His phrase is hell on earth.
• [07:16] Rishikesh.
• [07:46] White-water rafting, which is what domestic tourists come for.
• [10:32] The Ganges: bathing in it removes sins, and the water is said to keep for years without spoiling.
• [11:06] He drinks some.
• [12:16] His verdict — one of the best things he has done in India.
• [12:47] Why the river is holy: it flows from the glacier at Gangotri, and the rituals follow the water.
• [13:51] Dinner in the Sky: 3,500 rupees, about $40, an hour suspended from a crane.
• [14:37] A group from Delhi, Jaipur, Kolkata and Gujarat adopt him before the table has left the ground.
• [19:52] The nerves, which he admits to and laughs through.
• [23:19] Vegetable biryani, his first.
• [25:38] His verdict: the food is average, the experience is worth the $40, and he says which is which.
• [26:43] The operator does seven or eight lifts a day in season.
• [27:22] Morning swims in the Ganges, which he describes as coffee for the body.
• [27:49] Rishikesh as the yoga capital of the world, where people come to train as teachers.
• [29:30] Tapovan, the touristy centre — cafés, markets, domestic pilgrims, adventure tourists and westerners with braided hair.
• [30:05] Sadhus living in a roadside hut. He had assumed they lived better. He gives 100 rupees and jokes about what it will be spent on.
• [33:06] A hat, 150.
• [34:16] People filling containers with holy water to take home.
• [34:53] A salty-sweet lemonade, 50 rupees, visibly murky, which he drinks anyway and enjoys.
• [38:33] A family group travelling together which he’s told numbers 150.
• [41:17] The message a local asks him to pass to his audience: don’t pollute the Ganges — and Harry widens it to any river anywhere.
• [41:17] Atithi devo bhava, as it’s explained to him: the visitor is a god.
• [42:23] Maggi noodles cooked on the riverbank for 50 rupees, with onion and pepper added.

Extracted pages

• Places: Rishikesh, Delhi
• Country: India
• Person: Will
• Tips: Reward honesty and hard work