Last bit of Delhi

We've been a bit busy over the last few days so no blog action... so we've got a few posts to catch up on.

Our last day in Delhi was a scorcher, so we scoured the rough guide for some shade and decided to head to a nice are of park called Lodi Gardens. The guide didn't really set our expectations really high, but it turned out to be one of our favourite bits of Delhi.

The park itself was lovely and green, with quite a lot of hosing action to keep everything from drying up - most of the sites we've seen so far have been dry, with empty fountains and ponds. There was a real sense of peace and tranquility, considering the entire park was ringed by 4 lane crazy roads as well. The park was organised around three or four ancient temples, which were in surprisingly good nick considering they were in a free park with no one to guard them - its the kind of thing that would have been vandalised to hell and back if it was left alone in England for more than 20 minutes.

The other highlight was the amount of wildlife that had made the park its home - there were geese on the ponds, huge birds of prey swooping between the trees, and countless little squirrel/skunk creatures on the ground. Will have to upload a photo because we see these little things everywhere now!

This is Alex standing in the door way of one mausoleum looking over to an ancient mosque, as you can see the gardeners were hard at work even though it was free to enter.



Later on that day we took a stroll down to the other main bit of colonial designed New Delhi, the Rajpath. This is an enormous tree lined boulevard with a monument called India Gate at one end, and the India parliament buildings (I think!) at the other end. We tried to get to the parliament buildings but they shut the road leading to them at 8pm, so we had to suffice with the Arc de Triumphe-esq India Gate end. And obviously the gratuitous long shutter delay photos weren't far behind...



I think the monument is to the soldiers lost in the various conflicts that India has fought in (I think most of the earlier ones were pretty much the conflicts that the UK launched India into to be honest...)



After that we headed back to Connaught Place for a rock night at another bar recommended in the Rough Guide... after 2 weeks of no music it was quite a treat but sadly we had to get up early the next day for the train to Agra...