Bahá’í Temple (Lotus Temple)

Originally uploaded by neilmadhvani.

Wow, what a packed day of sightseeing we had today in Delhi. We started by exploring the main shopping areas around Janpath, including the enormous Central Cottage Emporium which showcases handicrafts from around India. The prices are extremely reasonable too. We spent some time around Connaught Place, which I think is really architecturally spectacular – it’s a shame that the area looks a bit of a mess right now due to further Metro construction work, but once it’s all done it should hopefully look really impressive.

In the afternoon we went to Old Delhi and explored the bustling shopping street there (Chandni Chowk) and then the Lal Qila (Red Fort) which has some beautiful gardens. It was then on to Rajghat (Mahatma Gandhi’s cremation site) followed by the incredible Lotus Temple, which is one of seven in the world built by followers of the Bahá’í faith. They have a museum there too and I learnt a lot about this multi-religious faith that was established nearly 200 years ago. It’s so peaceful inside the temple, and I like the way that the faith discourages against the worship of idols, rituals and any form of superstition. There’s a lot of focus on providing free universal education for all and religious harmony as a way towards achieving world peace.

We had dinner at a lovely South Indian restaurant called Naivedyam, which is located in Hauz Khas Village. This place serves a ‘thali’ in the evening, which includes vegetable dishes, lentils, rice, breads, yoghurt and a sweet dish all for around 90 rupees – that’s under £1.20. A lot of it’s really spicy, but the fact it’s incredibly tasty makes up for that I certainly haven’t ended up with Delhi Belly here!

On a different note, anti-malarial tablets taste so bad! I’ve been taking Palurine tablets every day for the past 3 weeks, and Avlocor (which really tastes fowl even if on the tongue for a second) once a week. It’s a 7 week course – so got another 4 weeks to go after coming back to the UK… actually I’ve not been bitten by any insects at all – just as I’ve found with my previous trips to Asia, mosquitoes don’t seem to like my blood! I’m not complaining

Tomorrow we’re off to see the Taj Mahal in Agra, which is in Uttar Pradesh and apparently around 4-5 hours drive from here. Hopefully I’ll have some interesting photos from there to share soon!

Today’s photos are at the usual place – my Flickr gallery.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 24th, 2006 at 6:34 pm and is filed under Travel, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.