Sunday 21 January
Delhi
Today we visited 2 very famous sites in Delhi. Both were very nice parks with trees & grass (haven’t seen much of that here!) & birds flying around & chirping – even some small green parrots! Very relaxing after the chaos yesterday.
The first was Humayun’s Mausoleum, a World Heritage Site that dates from the 1500s, the burial site of one of the Moguls that supposedly was the inspiration for the Taj Mahal, except it’s done in red stone rather than marble. It had the large building, but also a series of smaller ones.
I came back to the bus a bit early & visited with our driver, a Sikh named Kashmir. He has the turban and characteristic clothes, longish beard, etc. I say we visited, it’s a loose term since he hardly spoke English and I certainly don’t speak hindi. He told me his hair is 7.5 meters long (20+ feet?) and he wraps it up in the turban every 2 days, it takes too long to do it every day so he just leaves it “up.” Something like folks who get cornrows in their hair I imagine. He also told me about the 10 gurus of the Sikhs, names etc, which were totally lost on me.
Before we went in we saw a snake charmer guy with 3 cobras – cool! The photo mentor says that in jaipur they will be a dime a dozen, rows of them. We were still pretty excited. By the way this afternoon we went to another part of old delhi & there were cows strolling around amongst the traffic, so we’ve hit a couple of the stereotypes. Now we just need to add elephants to the list & we can go home.
Second famous site was Qutab Minar, a 220-or-so-ft tower built in the 1100s or so. It was originally a hindu site, but when the moguls took over they scraped the hindu parts off of the buildings & put calligraphy & turned it all into a mosque etc. now it’s pretty much just ruins, but very pretty ones. This is a place that families come for a day out on Sundays, so there were lots of women in colorful saris etc. it was also a nice stop. People were all very friendly & smiling, as families often are when they get out of the house & have a bit of fun.
We had a huge lunch at an Indian restaurant – a bit silverish platter with small bowls of lamb, chicken, & veggie curries, lentils, and yogurt, of course with plenty of rice & naan bread. We’ve done some serious eating on this trip.
I forgot to say that today was clear and cool and sunny and beautiful, just the kind of day we treasure & seldom get in houston, fabulous all the way around.
Guess I will close. We have to leave for jaipur tomorrow on a 8am flight, so I’ve got to get moving. Will send a few pix from yesterday, but haven’t had a chance to process today’s cobras, parrots, and ruins. And cows.
More tomorrow if the hotel has internet access!
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