Day 2 in New Delhi

We had the same car and driver today as Wed, and we got started with him around 9:30a. Our aim was to see the rest of the main sights in this city, and after breakfast, we started with Rajpath, the area where the President's House, and certain Ministry Offices are located. I equate this area to the Washington DC area around The White House, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, etc. I enjoyed seeing it again (having seen it in '95), and M was impressed with the architecture. He even noted that the places looked like they had been designed to represent India well, not having acres and acres of manicured lawns, simply because that doesn't exist in India. For example, the land surrounding the Rashtrapati Bhavan (President's House) has some grass, but mainly has well maintained red dirt pathways, etc. as a lot of the rest of India. You have to see it (which you can, once we post pics). After, we headed to India Gate, which is a war memorial, on the other side of Rajpath (again very similar to the layout in DC).

Finishing with that area, we went to Humayun's Tomb. It's amazing to see the amount of land that is taken up by some of these historical sites and there were some impressive details to note here. We then went to Qutb Minar. I'd equate this to India's Leaning Tower of Pisa, but that's probably a lame way of putting it. We enjoyed it, but we're getting tired of seeing historical sites with Arabian/Mughal motifs, and glad this is done! We had lunch at McDonald's (see separate posting re: it) and then decided to visit the Gandhi Smriti. It's a museum of the bungalow where he spent his last 144 days and where he was assassinated. The exhibits, including recent multimedia additions, are amazing, and we both walked away with better knowledge of this great man and his contributions to India and the world, and feeling somber. I'm left to wonder what Gandhi would have to say about the state of Indian and world affairs today.

After such a serious experience, we wanted to lighten the mood, so we had our driver drop us off to do a little handicraft shopping and such at Connaught Place (more details in other posting).