Delhi of Dreams ...

Friday morning was avery early start for the flight to Delhi. I arrived at about 8am and was met by Vikas, the local agent,who introduced me to my driver Raj, who will look after me for the rest of the trip. We arrived at the hotel, The Florence Inn, a very nice traditional style building which is quite central. In the afternoon Raj and my guide, Rather came for the city sightseeing tour.

We started off on the Rajpath. This is the big wide boulevard which runs from the Rashtrapai Bravan, the Presidential Palace at the west end of the path to India Gate on the east side. The Presidential palace is magnificent. It was built by the British between 1921 and 1929. The architect was Edwin Lutyens, who also designed India Gate. The Rajpath is the scene of great festivity and colour for the annual Independence Day parade on 26^th January.

The path starts from the Palace with 2 huge symmetrical arms of the original palace which are now Government ministry buildings. The palace and surrounds are heavily guarded and we could not stop or park in the area.

We continued down the Rajpath to India Gate. Similar in purpose and appearance to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, it commemorates the 90,000 Indian soldiers killed in world War I. It too has an eternal flame burning inside.

A second smaller construction close by once held a statue of Lutyens the architect. After Indian independence from Britain in 1947, the new Government removed the statue of Lutyens and planned to erect a statue for Gandhi instead. Anxious not to upset the British, however, they decided against the Gandhi statue and the plinth remains empty today. I had to smile at the very civilized approach, a little different to the way the Irish treated the statue of Admiral Nelson, which dominated the Dublin skyline, from Nelson’s Pillar until 1966. (Nelson’s Pillar was blown up in March 1966, and neither he nor the pillar survived.)

Our next call was at the Lotus temple. This is a very beautiful modern building in the shape of a Lotus flower. It’s a recent construction and is House of Worship of the Baha’i religion. They claim total independence from any religion and the temple has no statues or images at all. It’s just a big quite empty arena for meditation. The temperature today must have been 40 +. It was absolutely baking, which was Ok till you had to take off your

shoes to go into the temple. This involved walking quite a bit on ridiculously hot pavements where there was no shade. I felt like I was walking in a frying pan, so needless to say, we didn’t hang about !!

After the Lotus Temple, we took some respite from the sun and made an indoor call on the specialist Kashmir carpet makers. The complex patterns are jealously guarded and handed down through families from generation to generation. One of the seniors in this particular family showed me how to read the pattern and tie the individual knots in the silk thread. The carpets are very beautiful and virtually indestructible.

Then it was on to the last stop of the day, the Qutub Minar (the tower that’s nearly as tall as me

above !).It was built by the first mogul king of India. It sits within a large compound which houses the first mosque in India and reminded me of the ancient Roman Forum. There are many covered walkways with columns and balustrades, with large courtyards in the centre. The first 3 floors of the tower were built by the original king and the next one, which is white marble was built by the next king. A third king decided to build anew, and determined to build a much broader, higher tower, despite advice that such a structure would not survive. He started the new building and a bit like a modern builder, he ran out of money and the tower remains unfinished today.

The compound was very busy, mostly with local people and we met many groups of school children in the grounds.

Thankfully it had cooled down somewhat when we left the Qutab Minar, and we returned to the hotel ready for an early start to an exciting day in Agra tomorrow.