Saturday, January 1, 2011

Hungover and Lost

Stardate 64502.4

22:09 - What Happened on New Year's Eve in Delhi won't end up on the FFL, but I don't know if it will end up staying in Delhi. However, this story is about how we travelled on our own throughout Delhi. Our professor told us a few places to go. We started our journey hiring a SUV and driver from our hotel. We went to the Ghandi Smriti. We got to see where Gandhi Ji lived before he died. They kept his room and things the way there were when he passed on from this world. This Smirti was the first introduction (on this trip) to Gandhi Ji whose way of life and message changed many aspects on how we view the world.

After the Ghandi Smriti, we lost that peaceful feeling. Our guide did not understand where we wanted to go despite him indicating that he did. We ended up in Old Delhi in the North, instead of the New Delhi section in the South.  Old Delhi is home to more of the poorer and crowded population. Being from the U.S., it is harder to comprehend the aggressive, poor nature of this section. But our guide too us to the middle of this section and wanted to leave us with a rickshaw driver/ his friend. We were not having it. After a fair amount of unnecessary miscommunication and an enlarging headache, we headed back to New Delhi.


We finally arrived at Humayun's Tomb, which served as the inspiration for the Taj Mahal. A few of us broke free and ran around the tomb area. We spent a bunch of time at a smaller tomb because we had no idea where the big tomb was. We finally arrived at Humayun's (real) Tomb.  This tomb towers over the surrounding gardens. On New Years Day, this place was extremely crowded because everyone had the day off and nonforiegners had to pay only 10 rupees to get in. As the sun sent down, we walked into the second Moghul Emperor's tomb and listened to the call to prayer. Still recovering from our hang over, we soon figured out why  this great emperor stumbled to his death; the stairs at this monument and during his time were killer steep! Eventually, we left for our hotel and chowed down on dinner because we hadn't had food for eight hours.

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