Right, sorry it's taken me so long to get an update online, we've been out in the Rajasthan desert and an internet connection was rare to say the least, I'll try and get as much detail up now as I can, I’ve been trying to upload pictures to Facebook for the last 40 minutes and have managed a mighty ZERO, fantastic access speed we have here :) I'm never going to get them all up! That's the only problem with this great new camera I've taken 1.5Gb of pictures in a week I don't think I’ll every get them uploaded, thank god for the 8Gb memory stick!(Thanks again for the camera RDF).
Day 2 (Monday)
Ok, so our second day in Delhi, we decided to visit some of the monuments and other sites as the previous day we'd just explored the general vicinity of our hostel. So we got a tuc-tuc over to Old Delhi train station with the intention of walking down to the Red Fort (there was a link in my last post) so once we’d seen the massively underwhelming sight of the Old Delhi station we decided to head over to the Fort and after about a walk of 30 minutes during the middle of the day (which was kind of warm…) we found out the Fort is shut on Monday (should probably have read the guidebook a bit better…). So after this wonderful start to the day we grabbed a cycle-rickshaw and headed off for a tour of Jama Masjid and Old Delhi.
Jama Masjid is a large mosque (I think it’s the biggest Mosque in India) and was impressive although packed with people and loads unofficial guides. Luckily Alan and myself are at the peak of physical health, otherwise the climb to the top of the tower would have really knackered us out! (This is the first set of pictures I’ve been trying to upload completely unsuccessfully, so far after 1 hour; this machine has managed to upload absolutely no pictures!)
Once we’d finished at the Mosque our rickshaw driver took us on a tour of Old Delhi, and believe me it’s an experience, I’ve got some pictures… but the number of people, buses, trucks, rickshaws, camels, cows, dogs and monkeys is unbelievable, it’s like rush hour from hell, but from an outsiders point of view great fun to see, I just wouldn’t want to live there! That occupied most of our afternoon and in the early evening we headed down to India Gate to have a look at the Rajpath all of which was built as part of New Delhi and looks incredibly similar to Washington DC’s mall, we finally headed back to our part of Delhi and had a meal in a later bar called “Gem Bar”.
Day 3 (Tuesday)
We’d arranged a car for the day as some of the monuments are miles outside of the city centre and the tuc-tuc would have taken ages! We got picked up at 10am and headed over to the Red Fort (which was open this time….) it took us about an hour and a half to wander round as it’s massive, we never got to the outer sections as it’s just two big! It was quite impressive; up to 1947 it was used as a British army base, and then used by the Indian Army until the late nineties. Again, plenty of pictures of this too, just no way of getting them online.
After the Red Fort we headed down to Humayun’s Tomb, which was (and still is) the most impressive monument we’ve seen, we initially went into one of the older tombs which looks very similar to several over temples/tombs, and was quite neglected and having spent some time exploring it thoroughly we headed over to the second tomb expecting much of the same, and we couldn’t have been more wrong. The main tomb complex is amazing and has only recently been restored, it’s an early version of what eventually became the Taj Mahal, and looks truly stunning, it’s still being restored which means you can’t access all of it, but what you could was really impressive if you’re ever in Delhi I can’t recommend it strongly enough check out it’s Wiki page hopefully some of the pictures there do it justice!
Next on the agenda was the Qutb Minar complex which features the tallest stone tower in India and again is awe-inspiring as it towers over the whole area and is incredibly ornate, there are several other buildings around it, (including an unfinished second tower that would have been twice the size of the current one) however none of them are in anything like the condition the tower is (it looks almost new!).
By this point we were both getting knackered and overheated, so our next stop turned out to be perfect, we headed to Baha’I Temple (the Lotus Temple) which was completely different to the other monuments as its only recently been built and is very much still in use. Once you head towards the entrance the volunteers ask you to remove your shoes (in fact lots of temples seem to do this) and you can head inside in silence (they’re extremely strict about this with people patrolling the aisles scorning people silently!) it’s extremely relaxing inside, nice and cool with a very peaceful atmosphere, so peaceful in fact we had to leave for fear of falling asleep!
Finally we had a quick drive past the President’s palace and then headed back to the district where our hotel is, booked a 12 day tour of Rajasthan (which we’re now about halfway through) and had something to eat and a few beers before heading off to pack for our early start.
So far on our tour of Rajasthan we’ve been to:
Bikaner
Jaisalmer (where we slept in the desert for a night)
Jodhpur
Ranakpur
And we’re now in Udaipur, unfortunately details of the past few days will have to wait as I’m starving and we’re about to walk into town!
Cheers
Chris
