Day 35 & 36: New Delhi...

Day 35: Today I left Jaipur and headed to New Delhi. I arrived and noticed how much modern is was to Jaipur. I guess since it is the capital of India it is expected to be modern. I noticed a big statue of 'Hanumam' which is the king of the monkeys. Is half man and monkey. I thought how interesting it reminded me of when I was in Bali (another Hindu area) and saw big statues of the gods in the middle of the road. I walked around town and was checked out there subway system. I was very impressed as the subway system was very modern. I checked out the subway system map and realized they had a neighborhood called 'Rohini', I was pretty impressed as Rohini is not a very common name they even had neighborhoods with the name 'Patel'.


Day 36: Today I took a tour of New and Old Delhi. I saw the Jantar Mantar, which is the astronomical observatory with masonry instruments. Then headed to Lakshmi Narayan Temple, which is dedicated to the goddess of wealth 'Laskmi'. Hindu temples are usually dedicated to a god or gods and the god or gods are displayed as a statue ornately decorated.
The temple was built in the Orissan style (Orissa is a state in India). The headed to the Qutub Minar, the Bahai House of Worship. Had a break for lunch some of us headed to 'McDonalds' as we were short on time. They have all different types of burgers with an Indian twist to them
all without beef of course, since the cow is very sacred. The cow represents fertility and nurturing in the Hindu religion. The cows roam around freely on the streets and often have right of way with traffic. The pizza restaurants all don't have pork pepeorni they have lamb and other types of peporoni, pork is not alow to be eaten in the Muslim religion. Finished the tour that day with the Red Fort and Humayun's tomb. Red Fort and Humayun's Tomb are both examples of Mughal articeture, Shah Jahan was suppose to move his capital from Agra to Delhi and built the fort for this purpose. Humayun's Tomb was built by the Persian born senior wife of Humayun, the 2nd Mughal emperor. Then headed to dinner with some people on the tour bus. Over dinner I was mentioning how it would be nice to get back to 'reality', one of the guys turned to me and said this is 'reality' and I thought wow this is true for most of the population this is the reality. The povery, people trying to sell you things, etc.... Interesting how we define our own realiy by our surroundings...

Mughals-came from Afghanistan and had conqured much of North India. The founder of the Mughal line Babur was a descendant of Genghis Khan (the great emperor of Mongolia)
There were 5 great Mughal emperors one of them included Shah Jahan who the bulit the great Taj Mahals.

New Delhi-was built as the imperial capital of India by the British and Old Delhi served as the Islamic capital of India.