I spent the day in or about in central New Delhi. I started off at Qutib Minar and hung out there for about 45 minutes. I’d been there before, so I snapped a few pictures, walked around the grounds and went on my way.

I was dropped off for the morning at the National Museum. From there, I knew I wanted to try to get to the Mogul Gardens (they’re only open one month a year), so I started on a 1.5 hour treck to first try to find the Parliment House and second, to try to get behind it to the gardens. After much asking in English and people replying in half-English half-Hindi, I managed to find my way there (not without almost giving up at least once).

The gardens were quite cool. The first part is a herbal garden which shows off various types of herbs that are grown along with plaques describing their medicinal (or otherwise) properties. The walk continued to an area that contained the main, mulit-acre (?) garden which had flowing fountains and water paths that criss-crossed in perfect symetery. The other part of the garden of note was a circular pool that was walled and on the inside was a set of plants/gardens/whatever that hugged the diameter of the pool. Unfortunatly no cameras or even mobile phones were allowed inside, so I didn’t get a chance to take any shots.

After the Mogul Gardens, I took an auto-riksha back to the Central Secretariat metro stop. The Delhi Metro is new, about three years old, and wasn’t even open when I was here in 2003. Now it’s got about three lines. The rolling stock seemed simular to the ones used in Shanghai Line 2, but apparently they’re not (Delhi’s are some Mitsubishi JV built) and the ticket system was identical to Bangkok’s (with the plastic RFID tokens). It was clean and largly civil inside the system. I rode it out the Delhi Main, got out in to the absolute madness of Chandni Chowk and walked over to Red Fort.

In the area, I had a masla dosa for lunch at Haldiram’s (not sure if it’s the supposed original one), and if I end up back in that area I will most definintly try to find the gali parathe walee which I’ve read and heard about. After lunch, I spent a few hours at Red Fort, walking through the various buildings and edifics that remain and that have been restored. It’s all quite nice and all, but I’d been there at least once before, so I took it quite easy.

From there, I went back via Metro to the Central Secct area, and then went to the Lodhi Gardens for an hour to look at the old buildings from the time of the Lodhi Kings, then headed back to Guragon. Tomorrow (Wed) and the day after (Thu) I’m going to be in Jaipur. I’m taking a taxi from here to a bus station in Delhi at 6:30am to make the four hour bus ride.