India Gate, Delhi, India

Friday 8.7.2011

Delhi, India

Landed to Delhi airport at 5AM. Not much to tell about getting of the plane and the drive to the hotel. The weather was hot and humid, it felt like being inside a huge greenhouse. I have been here once before, year 2008, so everything felt familiar. But my friend was seeing this place very first time.  

At the hotel we had couple of hours before our driver picked us up for a tour around Delhi. Before going to have some sleep we ate breakfast at the top floor of the hotel. I managed to capture a Green parrot, which was spending some time outside of the hotel window. And I ate some weird hairy fruit, Rambutan ‘Hairy Lichee’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambutan
 

India Gate

A war memorial arch, was built in honor of 90.000 Indian soldiers who lost their lives in the World War I. Below it burns the Amar Jawan Jyoti, the eternal flame in tribute to all martyred soldiers in India.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_Gate

The gate is enormous and carved full of names. There was a soldier with a gun hushing people away if they came too near of the chain.

We were not able to walk more than couple of meters at time when a group of people asked to have a photo with us. We also noticed that so many people were taking photos of us. Got this feeling that we were the attraction not the gate.

Luckily I was familiar with this photo issue since my last trip to India and pre-warned my friend about it.  For a Finnish person it feels kind an awkward to pose with totally strange persons. Compared to people from other countries, our personal space is much wider. We avoid unnecessary touching as much as possible, hugs and kisses are shared only with family members and very close friends. So you can understand how this whole thing felt for us. But posing in a photo with us made them happy so let them have those :)

But back to the story. My mind is like a bunch of wires in disarray and I might jump from one issue to another so easily ;)

There were also a lot of sellers trying to get us buying all kind of flying, chirping, hanging, jumping, bouncing junk. Let’s just mention that they were not lucky…