United States Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to India and his planned schedule continued to be affected by heavy rains which lashed the national capital on Wednesday morning.
Not only his planned visit to three religious shrines in Old Delhi – including Sis Ganj Gurudwara, Jama Masjid and Gauri Shankar temple – was cancelled, his visit to IIT Delhi campus was also delayed by almost an hour.
Kerry is on a two-day visit to the country for the Second Indo-US Strategic and Commercial (S&C) dialogue.
It all started the moment he landed at the airport on Monday evening and got stuck in a massive traffic jam en route to his hotel in Chanakyapuri. Kerry’s motorcade snailed through the traffic jam and it took him two hours to cover the 13-km stretch from Terminal 3 of IGI airport to his hotel.
Additional forces were called in to clear path for Kerry’s convoy when the news of it being stuck at Satya Mark in Lutyen’s Delhi reached authorities. The reporters and members of John Kerry’s team, who were a part of the convoy, took to micro-blogging website Twitter and informed about the delay.
“John Kerry stuck in traffic like everyone else on wet New Delhi night… Kerry’s drive from the airport took two hours. More rain forecast for tomorrow,” Tweeted Nicholas Wadhams, foreign policy reporter of Bloomberg news.
“John Kerry stuck in traffic like everyone else on wet New Delhi night… Kerry’s drive from the airport took two hours. More rain forecast for tomorrow,” he said in a series of tweets.
John Kerry stuck in traffic like everyone else on wet New Delhi night.
While on Tuesday, Kerry’s schedule went on as per the plan, rains managed to hamper it again on Wednesday. During the beginning of his speech at IIT Delhi campus, Kerry managed to joke about the situation and turn of events. “You all must have come here in boats,” he said the students gathered in the auditorium.
Delhi experienced waterlogging and traffic snarls at multiple places on Wednesday after a sudden downpour which lasted for couple of hours in the morning.