Day 6: Delhi

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Today we decided to start our tour by 9:30 am. After shower, we headed to buffet breakfast. Pretty good spread. Highlights were idli/sambhar, yogurt, coffee, fruits, ajwain paratha and omelettes. Driver and guide Raj were ready by 9:30 am. first stop was Juma Masjid. Since it was Saturday, it was open to public. It is in Old Delhi. The roads were narrow and congested. This mosque is a beautiful place. Since P1, P2 and myself were wearing shorts they provded us lungis to cover your legs. We were able to climb up the towers for a panoramic view of the city. After that, we took rickshaw tour of Chandni Chowk. This part of the city consists of spice, nuts and other types of wholesale markets. we hired two rickshaws. It is sad to see these human pedaled cycles are still in use. But this is one way for these folks to make money. These drivers were able to act as guides as well. Since the breakfast was quite filling, we told the tour guide not to stop for lunch. Raj suggested that they could have lunch when we were shopping. Next stop was Rajghat. This location has the memorial for Gandhi and other Indian leaders. Our main interest was to visit Gandhi memorial. It is a well maintained area compared to other public places here. We spent some time here. Our next location to visit was the government buildings area. This included India Gate, Rashtrapathi bhavan and parliament house. We could not go close to India Gate because of security concerns. We took pictures from outside. Drove to President's office (Rashtrapathi Bhavan). You can go into the facility if you had an appointment. We took pictures near the entrance. We also saw parliament house, north and south block. Lotus temple is a Bahai sect's place of worship. This is a religion that started 170 years ago to unite humankind under one concept. The idea is good here. There is no idol worship. You can pray in silence inside for however long you wish.There are rows of seats (church style). We prayed for few minutes and headed out. We did not visit the visitor center as the guide suggested that we skip it if we are not too serious about this faith. Now came the shopping part. This area is called Delhi haat - govt run shopping complex: prices are fixed here. It is a 5 story complex with various sections for clothing, art work, furnishings etc. There is no compulsion of buying anything here. But they show so many items to you and by the end of this stint, you feel like you need to buy something. We headed to another very popular site - Qutb Minar - It is created as a Mosque structure in 1200 AD. It was built on top of existing temple structures. It was created by the Ghazni dynasty (pre-mughal rulers) of Delhi. Old temple should have been very good since the leftover sculptures were still in fair shape. Mughals defaced lot of these figures since they did not believe in idols. This is a vast area of old temples, tombs, iron pillar structure and Minars. It was close to the closing time around 5 PM. But we were able to spend sometime walking in this area. Pranav took some awesome pictures of these structures. Another popular tourist attraction is the Laxmi Narayan Temple. This is very popular with western tourists since the temple is very well maintained. It was initially owned by Birlas and then given to the Government. But it looks like Birlas still invests a lot on this temple. It is a marble temple of Narayanan and Lakshmi. Included are various hindu Gods, refelecting mirror room etc. Overall it was very neat. The guide was OK. But he treated us like a foreigner (since we are from USA). That was a bit irksome as he was trying to explain Lord Ganesha and Hanuman to us! We came back to the hotel and bid good bye to the guide. Typically, we tip the guide for thier services depending on how satisfied we are with them. Dinner was in the hotel's restaurant itself. It is called "Charcoal Grill" - We went for a packaged dinner. 5 starter items - Paneer, pineapple, soya, spinach/corn and veggie grilled items, fruit mix, dal makhni, bread basket and gulab jamu/kulfi. Very good ambiance and good quality of food for 700 Rs a person.

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