Just to make things a bit more confusing, we decided to take Dave's sister, Beth, along on this trip with us. We left Chicago on the same day. Beth's flight left a few hours after ours, but she made it to Delhi a few hours before us because she had a direct flight and avoided London and Bahrain. We all found our way, safe and sound, to the Ajanta Hotel.
After a few minutes of sleep, we went out to see some of the sights of Delhi during the day. We started in Old Delhi and first hit the Jama Masjid, or Friday Mosque. This was built by the same emperor who built the Taj Mahal and is one of the largest mosques in Asia.
From there, we moved down Chandni Chowk, the main thoroughfare of Old Delhi and visited the Red Fort. This is actually a large palatial walled city built by the Mughal emperors. The Muslim Mughal empire controlled northern India for quite a while, so they had time to erect a very expansive collection of buildings. The gate shown below is where Indian independence was declared in 1947.
Dave's sister Beth took a great deal of pictures. Below, you can see her in the standard pose that she struck while in India.
After the Red Fort, our taxi driver took us to Raj Ghat. This is a memorial to Mohandas Ghandi, the father of independent India. It is actually the spot where his body was cremated after his assassination and it is marked by a large marble platform and an eternal flame.
We went from Raj Ghat to Connaught Place with the intention of doing some shopping, but we couldn't find the things that we were looking for. Instead of taking our taxi back to the hotel, we hired an autorickshaw. It was a tight squeeze for the three of us, but it gave us a nice, up-close view of the traffic.
The next morning, we were catching a train to take us to Agra and the Taj Mahal, so we needed to get a good night's sleep.
Dave and Beth
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