New Delhi 1

A few yards to the north of the hotel I’m staying at, I found this intriguing microcosm of life in Delhi. The pink walls of the buildings reminded me of how deeply people value colour in India — it is omnipresent, every experience is coloured by colour. This morning I walked up some dark marble stairs in a beautiful Colonial style white building, and pink and orange flowers were strewn on each sides of the black steps, absolutely exquisite. Also in the picture you can see the variety of transport in a single side street of the city — the youngster with his bicycle, the street vendor with his stall, the motorcycles and the cars. I was in Delhi for an energy conference, part of which involved me trying to think through the future of energy consumption in this country of 1.2 billion people whose population is rapidly growing. CNG vehicles abound (CNG stands for Compressed Natural Gas) and the light duty vehicle that took me on the hair-raising journey to the Red Fort travelled at what seemed like the speed of sound on this fuel.