Seeing some of the sights in New Delhi

A few weeks ago, in a scurry to see some monuments before Karin left to go back to the US, we took a day off from work to see some sights in Delhi. Although we were originally going to take one of Delhi’s busses around, one of Karin’s co-workers offered to bring us instead. And I soon learned that she’s a history buff so it was great to hear stories about Delhi’s history that were not boring at all!

In the next few weeks though, I still plan to visit the other monuments and museums that I didn’t have a chance to see this past weekend, and will take advantage of the public bus. New Delhi has a great hop-on hop-off bus that takes you to a variety of monuments around the city. So forget the hassle of finding an auto rickshaw or finding parking, the stress is taken away!

Our first stop was Humayan’s Tomb or as I call it, the prelude to the Taj Mahal. Karin & I paid our Rs 250 (about $4 US) while her co-worker paid Rs 10 (about 16 cents) for the entry fee.

Humayan was the second Mughal Emperor of India, and the tomb was built by his widow 14 years after he died. It cost 1.5 million rupees to build the huge temple. I found out that with Mughal architecture (including the Taj Mahal) they build a smaller “doorway” in a sense that masks the larger architecture. So when we first entered Humayan’s Tomb, we saw a much smaller building, still with some tombs but then after a little walkway and some nice green grass, we saw the gorgeous two-leveled tomb. Believe it or not, the tomb actually has about 150 graves of the ruling family and other important people.  

As we were leaving, we saw hundreds of school girls come running in and we were very happy to leave. Although that didn’t stop the girls from staring at us as we were walking out and yelling “Miss, miss!” in attempts to get a wave out of us.

After we left, we decided that going to India Gate would be best since it was only a few kilometers away. But with the Delhi traffic, a few kilometers means nothing because we easily sat in traffic for a good half hour without moving an inch. Cars even began driving over the raised median strip to make a u-turn or drive on the opposite side of the road! Never a dull moment in India.

When we finally got to India Gate, we realized that parking was impossible. So instead, Karin’s co-worker dropped us off and we decided to meet up with her later. The monument itself was huge! I have to say though, I was more in awe of all the beautiful fresh flowers lining the bottom of the gate than the gate itself. The British looking costumes of the guards was a sight to see too.

After meeting up with Karin’s co-worker, we decided to grab some lunch at a country club she has membership to then go see Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum. After finding out that we were inappropriately dressed for one of the restaurants at the country club, we finally settled on a casual restaurant with a lunch buffet. The food was delicious! Since I have vegetarian food every day of every week, I don’t often have really good meat dishes. So having some yummy chicken masala dishes was just what I needed! I only wish I had taken pictures.

I'll be blogging about my visit to the Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum up next!