Delhi Delights and Goodbye, Stephanie!

Sorry I've been a bit lazy and slacking in the blogging world of late. I've been pretty busy with work and getting back on schedule after traveling. My trip to New Delhi was really fun! Stephanie and I (accompanied by our wonderful escort, Rakesh, of course) took the overnight train from Dehradun last Sunday. It was a bit weird getting Stephanie ready to leave for good, she had all her luggage and everything with her! We arrived in Delhi at about 5 or 6 AM and headed to another sweet government accommodation WII hooked us up with. We figured it was about $8 total for the two nights we stayed there- crazy! So we slept for a few hours after we got there, showered, then headed into the city to hit up some of the NGOs we wanted to visit. It takes quite awhile just to get around the city because there is SO much traffic. Delhi is also further south and a lot hotter and more humid than Dehradun, it was really a furnace. Unfortunately, we weren't able to visit the Wildlife Trust of India because their office was sealed off and in the process of moving. But we did get to visit TRAFFIC-India in the World Wildlife Fund's office which was really awesome! TRAFFIC is a wildlife trade monitoring network that has branches all over the world! The TRAFFIC-India staff was very welcoming and friendly. We were even able to meet with the head and interview him for awhile. We got a lot of really interesting information and stayed there most of the morning and afternoon.

After our productive day we decided to treat ourselves with some shopping! Delhi has a lot of fun markets and what not. We went to this cool underground market called Palika Bazaar, where we both picked up some neat items. Stephanie and I are both really indecisive and Rakesh is always so patient as we take forever to sit and deliberate and bargain, haha! Dilli (or Delhi?) Haat was next on our agenda and I really liked that market. They had stuff from all the different states of India and I bought some awesome rings. They also had food stands from all the different states so we grabbed dinner there as well (even though I ended up ordering momos which I think are Tibetan and not even India, haha!). We were exhausted after running around in the Delhi heat all day and hit the sack around 10:00.

The next day we devoted almost purely to sightseeing and enjoying Stephanie's last day in India! We took one of these touristy buses that drives you all around the city. I couldn't really see any other way to do it though taking into account the heat and the sheer volume of things we wanted to see! The a/c coach was glorious, haha. We had to be there at 8:45 and so we left our hotel at about 7:45/8:00 to ensure we would arrive on time. Getting there was a bit of an adventure. The rickshaw drivers in Delhi are ridiculous! They don't know where anything is! Our driver told us he knew where we wanted to go then proceeded to ask for directions at every stop light! It was actually kind of hilarious/frusturating. We were starting to worry about getting there on time and we asked him, "Do you know where we are going?!" He turned around with this impish grin and gave the slightest shake of his head! But he got lucky I guess because we did get there on time.

The tour was from 9-6 and we saw SO much!I could go on forever about the fascinating history of all the different places we saw but to avoid boring you, I'll give a quick breakdown...

Jantar Mantar- An ancient astronomical observatory that still keeps accurate time for Delhi, London, and Tokyo! Also the site where I dropped my camera and broke the lens cover (it still works okay I just have to be really careful with it). :(



Birla Mandir- Another temple (we saw the Birla Mandir in Jaipur, as well) built by the wealthy industrialist family, the Mandirs. Honors Lakshmi, goddess of material well-being. Very ornante and extravagant.


Lotus Temple- A strikingly beautiful temple of the Baha'i faith. Made to look like a lotus flower since it is sacred in many religions.


Lunch- We stopped and had a quick lunch at kind of an Indian fast food place. We made a cool new Indian friend who bought us a new dessert we had never tried called halwa.
Sign inside the restaurant we ate at. Classy joint. Reminds me of China, good times.

Qutb Minar- A complex with the tallest stone tower in India built to commemorate the victory of Turkish Qutb-al-Din Aibak over the Rajput empire in 1192. India's first Muslim kingdom. It looked like something out of an Indiana Jones movie!

Red Fort- We'd seen a lot of forts but this one was still cool. It was built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (who also built the Taj) after he moved the capital from Agra to Delhi in 1639.

Humayun's Tomb- Supposedly the prototype for the Taj Mahal, built for the second Mughal Emperor Humayun by his widow. I liked the mix of red sandstone and marble in contrast with the pure marble of the Taj. It was beautiful.

We were dropped off in the nicer Connaught Place area so we had fun doing a little shopping around there as well. I found a store called Neel Kanth which was exciting. I've been meaning to tell you guys, Neel is actually a very common name around here, it means blue in Hindi!!! And actually saphire (my birthstone) is called neelum! I have seen hotels, stores, and even a temple with the name Neel in them and have also ran across it as a first name in my research a lot. Neel Kanth is actually a nickname for one of the most important Hindu gods, Shiva, the destroyer. There are tons of Gods in Hinduism but most are incarnations of the three biggies- Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver), and Shiva. Neel Kanth means blue throat because there is a story about Shiva swallowing venom which stuck in his throat turning him blue as he is often portrayed. Cool stuff.

So anyways, after shopping Stephanie and I decided to indulge for her last meal in India so we went to this pretty swanky restaurant called Durbar (I think?) in the 5-star Ashok Hotel. The decor was excellent, the staff very friendly, and we had a lovely meal of one of Stephanie's favorites, kadhai paneer. They gave us a ton of naan and I couldn't believe we ate it all, haha! Back at the hotel Stephanie and I stayed up pretty late writing some thank you cards and going over all of our work before she left. Her flight was at 6:30 AM so she had to get us at 3:30 AM to leave, I barely got any sleep. It was really sad to say goodbye to Steph. I have had so much fun getting to know her and couldn't imagine doing this internship with anyone else. We are really alike in a lot of ways and we often found ourselves even speaking in unison or thinking the exact same thing at the same time! She was a wonderful coworker, traveling companion, and of course, friend! So this post is dedicated to Miss Stephanie- I'm gonna miss you girl!



I met up with Rakesh at 7:30 and we decided to go see one more sight before leaving for Dehardun- the Akshardham Temple. We got there at 8 only to discover it opens at 10 but Rakesh convinced me to hang around in an adjacent temple until it opened. He brought aloo paratha homemade by his mother-in-law and we had a good time chatting and eating until it opened. I thought it was interesting we had to bring breakfast outside of the temple because the garlic wasn't allowed inside because Rakesh said it was too "strong" and "meat-like" or something. It's apparently the largest Hindu temple in the world and was truly specacular. It was built by Pramukh Swami Maharaj in honor of his guru (whose nickname was also Neel Kanth!). It was built out of marbkle and pink stone mostly with volunter labor from followers of this guru and his successors. It had amazing carvings of life-sized elephants all along the bottom with little quotes and parables. Some of them were SO random ("Elephants, happy vegetarians, munch on grass and leaves.") and others were kind of cool ("A mother's heart is a child's classroom." or "Service rendered with respect satisfies a deep hunger."). It was a beautiful temple and I'm really glad I waited around to see it. After that Rakesh and I took the noon bus back to Dehradun and I got home around 8:00.
This photo really doesn't capture the grandeur of it. You couldn't take cameras inside so I took this snap from the little temple we waited at next door.


The rest of the week and this weekend has been fairly uneventful. I started working with IT to make our database web accessible and am going to hopefully begin putting it into GIS next week. They also want me to give a presentation before I leave so I am working on that! It is crazy to think I only have 2 weeks left here! This weekend has been lovely, lazy, and raining. It is rare you get one of the rainy weekends you actually can just curl up with a book or movie and don't have to do anything. It has been nice. I also went over to one of my Indian girlfriend's dorms to see her wedding pictures. That is the third I've seen but they really don't get boring because they're so different from different regions. San-geeta actually had two ceremonies, one following the customs of Manipur where she is from and one following the customs were her husband is from, Tamil Nadu. I thought it was interesting there were different roles in the wedding for female guests at the wedding who had a son as their first born than for woman who had a daughter for their first born. Sons are much more highly coveted and there seems to be a lot of gender bias. However, there are some hopeful signs of slow changes. I read a really cool article in the Post the other day about a politician in a neighboring state who is not only a woman but also a Dalit, or an untouchable. If anyone is interested-

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/17/AR2008071702719.html

Anyways, I hope everyone had wonderful weekends and a a lovely relaxing Sunday like me. :)