Friday, Rahul and I spent the evening visiting the India Gate in the central part of Delhi. The place is a common pick nick area for Indian families and I was the only non-Indian, that I saw anyway, the whole evening. India Gate was created as a memorial for all the Indian soldiers who fought in WWI and the Afghan War. It's a grand memorial, with the names of fallen soldiers inscribed around the whole gate. I tried really hard to get a good photo of some names but my camera needed a tripod for the “night mode” and flash does not work at night in India. In the center of the India Gate lays the tomb of the unknown soldier; or in Hindi, “Amar Jawan Jyoti”. The flame at the tomb burns year round. Rahul said that the President of India comes every year to light the flame but Wikipedia does not mention that so I'm not sure which is correct.
We visited the Qutb Minar and the Lotus Temple today. It was 41C (106F) today and all things considering, I survived the heat fairly well.
We set out for the Qutb Minar first. Spent about an hour/hour and a half there before I got so parched that my head was starting to hurt and we decided that it wasn't worth getting heat stroke. Honestly, this place is amazing! I thought the Qutb Minar was just a pillar...maybe surrounded by a garden, but it's housed around an ancient house or mosque (I'm not sure which one or if both). There are several tombs of rulers within this complex.
Firstly, I want to point out the price difference to get into this place. Rahul paid 10 Rupees ($.22USD). I paid 250 Rupees ($5.50USD). Rahul got mad over the huge difference but really, it's only $5.50 to visit the largest brick minaret in the world. Not only that, I can see why they charge that. No Indian would pay 250 to visit the Qutb Minar, but EVERY foreigner would. And they do.
Once we left the Lotus Temple, we set off to do some shopping for the week. I grew tired of listening to “You're shirt may be too revealing, can you pull it up?” Rahul took me to a shopping area that I had apparently been to before but didn't recognize. It's not far from my apartment, only a couple kilometers and across the highway. While trying to find a place to park, I spotted a store which said it sold Dupattas (Scarves). I said the word out loud because it sounded like it'd be fun to say. Du-pot-ahs. Rahul said they would most definitely have the scarves which I sought. He didn't see the store sign so I'm glad I decided to be foolish or we would have been all over the place trying to find a dupatta. We found a plain black dupatta for only 110 Rupees ($2.62USD). It needs to be stretched out a bit but it will be perfect for wearing over my shirts so I don't have to worry about offending anyone or making some Indian pervert horny. I wanted to get one or two more because of the price but Rahul told me to wait to see how well it holds up. If it's good, we'd come back and get more. Then we did some grocery shopping. The fruit/vegetable stand was a mere fraction of the cost of the Defence Colony market; same with the milk, toilet paper, and other foods. After market shopping, we ordered food from Sagar's to be delivered, bought some water, and came back to my place.
It was definitely a productive day / weekend. I enjoyed every bit of it.
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