Saturday Tours -

We started with the Shah Jahan Mosque.  This was built after this particular Shah conquered from Agra in 1635.  It was completed in 1650.  It is an unusual mosque in that it is completely open air.  There was only a small covered area.  In one corner is a shrine to Mohammed, where relics are kept, including a strand from his beard.  Maybe a toenail, too.  Inscribed on the walls is a long history written in Urdu.  Urdu is a language that is a combination of Persian/Farsi and Hindi, with essentially an Arabic script.  Sorta like Spanglish or Yiddish, I suppose.  We had to walk around this place in our socks, which wasn’t exactly fun, since the Muslims feed the pigeons and there was bird poop all over.  The other docs on the tour and I questioned the lung status of the locals, but figured there were other things to get them first before beryliosis.  Again the air was so smoggy, my eyes burned.

We exited the mosque and piled into pedicabs to take us through the narrow, teeming streets of old Delhi.  Walking and interacting would have been more fun, but that is not the nature of this type of tour.  So we went in a large circle, gawking the natives, and them gawking us.

We climbed back onto the bus to go to Raj Ghat, Ghandi’s Cremation Site.  There were literally hundreds of kids, all in school uniforms, marching up to the site.  That’s where the nature of the Indian people comes out.  All the kids were mugging for the camera, saying hi, and wanting their pictures taken.  Even some of the other tourists got into the act.  Ann took a picture of some Japanese girls, and I took a picture of an Iranian family (with a kid that could have passed for Yoda) and then the Iranians and the Japanese wanted their pictures taken together, and then with us.  Cross cultural fun. 

Off then to the National Museum.  This had artifacts from the earliest civilizations in India, the Harappans, who lived on the banks of the Indus River beginning in about 2500BCE.  This was a very advanced civilization with large cities of brick buildings.  There is no record of much earlier civilizations, but these cities seemed to spring up from relative nothingness.  There are writings that no one has been able to translate yet, as there is no Rosetta Stone.  The Aryans invaded from Central & Western Asia in about 1500.  They brought a new set of gods(Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva) and stories (including the epics, Mahabarata and Ramayana) which became the basis for Hinduism.  The artifacts were just “OK”.  Again, there were literally hundreds of school kids marching through, not looking at anything, and mugging for the cameras.   I commented that the Chinese were better artists and artisans during this same period, and their preservation and presentation is much better.  However, there may be a much better collection in the British Museum.  Aah, colonialism.

On our way back to our hotel in the “Diplomatic Enclave”, we passed the “Embassy of the State of Palestine”.  Hmmmm.  A) I didn’t know there WAS as State of Palestine, and B) that anyone was officially recognizing it.  Big modern building, too.

The late afternoon has been free, as we are going for home hospitality this evening.  Very early morning tomorrow (wakeup call scheduled for 4:15) and AIS at 5 for a 6:05 train to Pushkar and the Camel Fair.  Depending on electricity and internet access, we may or may not be able to post from there…