Day 7 - Delhi tour
Delhi
Thursday, 10 November, 2011
Good morning (Su-prabhaat) everyone. I am up and ready for the Delhi sightseeing. This is a full day event and I am sure I would be as tired as I was yesterday. It is going to be fine though. I am attacking my throat with hot lemon tea (it helped a bit yesterday at the restaurant). Hopefully I feel better by the end of the day. I am off to meet with Kelly at the Delhi tourism office.
First stop on the tour is the Laxmi Naratan Temple. This temple is dedicated to Laxmi Narayan and consist of images of 'Lord Vishnu & his consort Laxmi. Our next stop, the Qutab Minar - a soaring stone tower (72 meters high) built by Qutub-ud-din aibak in 1193. At the base is the Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque (1st mosque in India). Then we visited the Lotus Temple a place of worship for Bahai faith ... It was completed in 1986. The structure is in the shape of Lotus flower (symbol of Purity in India). Credit for this structure goes to Fariboz Sahba from Canada. Our next stop was the museum of Indira Gandhi. Then we stopped for lunch at vegetarian restaurant 'café time' all menu was in Hindi except for chow mein and that's what we ordered. After lunch I felt really tired and dehydrated so I decided to take it a bit easy. I would just go to the free entry monuments. Our next stop was the Red Fort in Delhi 'Lai Qila' built by Shah Jahan in 1637. This was the first place where India's flag wast hosted after independence on the 15th of August 1947. Next stop we visited Raj Ghat - site of Mahatma Gandhi's cremation. This was my last stop but the tour itself ended at Humayun's Tomb - built by Humayun's widow, Queen Haji. This is supposed to be a prototype of the Taj Mahal in Agra.
Heading back to the tourism office, we found out that the road had been blocked so the driver had to drop us off halfway to the office. Since most of us were not familiar with the area, the guide helped with auto rickshaws for those that needed it but said I could either take the metro or an auto rickshaw - but the metro was cheaper and faster. I decided to try the metro not just because it us cheap but for the experience. It was not so bad except for the 20minutes queue to buy a token for my 5minutes ride to Karol Bagh station. Anyway I got to my hotel safely got some chicken momos for dinner, freshened up, packed my stuff for check out tomorrow. I will be hanging out at Kelly's hotel after I check out tomorrow since my flight is not until 11:30pm. Frank gets into Delhi a few hours from now so if he is well rested, the three of us might grab dinner because he is in the same hotel as Kelly. For now, I am going to read a bit and then sleep. So people it us Good night (Shubh Raatri) for now.