Another Day Trip to Delhi

For Independence Day yesterday, I just hung out around my guesthouse.

Today I met up with Tyler and Steve, two Americans who were at the Ciena offices this week. We went to Qutb Minar, which I had seen on a previous outing. We then went to Dilli Haat, a place where you can buy Indian crafts, and in typical Asian fashion, you have to haggle, starting low enough so you can finish at 50% of their initial asking price.

After lunch, we went to Jantar Mantar, a fairly unique 18th century astronomical observatory. If you can imagine it, it looks like what you would expect if you asked Antoni Gaudi to design a skateboard park with a ski jump in the middle of it. If if you can't imagine it that way, try Salvador Dali meets Stonehenge.

Rather than telescopes and sextants, they used large structures (called Yantras) to precisely measure celestial events like the motion of the sun, moons, stars and planets with an apparently high degree of precision. I'm always amazed with how some cultures, with very basic measuring technology, were able to discover things like the precession of the seasons, which required some pretty systematic long term measurement taking and some pretty refined mathematics.

Alas, the experience was a bit mired because of a 'free tour guide', who kept insisting on giving me a free tour, only to unsurprisingly, ask for a tip at the end of it. How many times can you say 'No thanks?'

Following this, we went to Laxmi Narayan, a temple built in honour of the Hindu goddess, Lakshmi, who was consort to Lord Vishnu. Considering it was built in 1622, it showed its age very gracefully. It is still very much a 'working temple', with lots of worshipers around performing pujas.

All in all, a pretty relaxed day out.