May 20

First a missing picture from yesterday evening:

Reinhold und Gudrun from Austria/Germany and Rosey from UK. We had such nice dinner talks! It turned out that Reinhold is a light scientist and Gudrun has her own scrap yard – talk about common interests!

Tony went for a walk at 7 am – before the heat hit. There were lots of people doing yoga in the parc at this time. An eagle sat watching.

After breakfast, we called our eager rikshaw-driver who had promised to get a car with AC and take us around on our last day in Delhi. We began with visiting Humayun’s tomb. It was already hot at 10 am.
Some more eagles saw when we took the mobile out to photograph them and hurried away.
We walked in the shade as soon as we could find it. Joanna is here in front of an old Banyan tree. They are considered sacred.
There it is – the elegant building of Humayun’s tomb! One of the guards insisted on taking a photograph. This is probably a good way for him to earn some extra money.

To the right is another tomb: that of Isa Khan.

Then we headed for Humayun’s large tomb, sweat running down our foreheads.
Inside there is a cupole ceiling…
… and a marble tomb in the middle. There were only a few tourists along with ourselves at this early hour.

Then we went to a tomb that lay somewhat behind Humayun’s that was called the Barber’s. It had two smaller tombs and apparently no tourists as a lot of doves seemed to live in here, we opened it ourselves and there was obviously no cleaning as in the others.

Now sweat was also running down our necks on our backs, it was time to go inside the museum, underground.

We had bought tickets, that we had to show three times before entering the space of the first room, to which we were commanded by a female guard. To our surprise, there was an exhibition about mosaics from Rome. After this, we were allowed to enter the main hall, where it stunk of gasoline. The smell was poignant through-out the whole exhibition space and must have come from the traffic outside/above.

Enhance the images to read the texts below:

We guess this is for prayers, each string representing a prayer.

This is an old engraved piece with text, lit by a rectangular lamp.

Some old coins and an antiquity of pottery terracotta fragment.

These guys represent a day each in the week: Sunday is wearing yellow – day for kingdom matters and rewarding the nobles, Monday is for wearing white – day for musical entertainment and meeting old companions & friends, Tuesday is for wearing red, day for kingdom’s affairs and for holding court of justice, Wednesday is for wearing blue – day for musical entertainment and meeting friends, Thursday is for wearing violet – day for meeting with literary and religious persons, Friday is for wearing green – day for general assmebly and Saturday is for wearing black – again meeting with literary and religious persons.

Terracotta toy.

After the museum, we bought a big bottle of water as we had already finished our two other ones. Then our driver Rakish took us to a place called Art India, which was a large store with nice AC environment and we were the only costumers. Outside, there was a statue of Ganesha.

A statue of Ganesha is welcoming us outside.

The store had a big loom where you could see how the carpets were made. The salesman is showing Tony the certificate of authenticity, and also that the carpet is only woven by adults. No children labour here, according to him.

Without buying a carpet, we then forced our way into the crafts’ section, where there were small boxes made out of camel bone.
There were strange bindles on some of the small figures of the gods. When I asked the other salesperson, he said it was because the faces were handpainted and should not be worn of as they clean the figurines. After the profane shopping, we went to a temple were Rakish showed us around and told us about the Hindu religion. We had to leave our shoes and mobiles at the entry. There were several halls and in one, there was a man reading out prayers. It turns out they are doing this the whole day through, changing person every two hours.

Rakish then took us to a shop for spices and teas close-by. We were immediately offered a cup of masala tea. Tony bought half the store as I and Rakish were watching. They seemed to have everything and the packages of 100 g were far too small for our household.

There was also a small shrine in this shop of Lakshmi and Ganesha. Rakish told us that Lakshmi is for good fortune and Ganesha is for good luck.
Back at the tailors’ shop, Joanna’s handsewn pants and tops were ready for pick-up. This is the lady that helped out with the female clothes. Male clothes had male sales-persons, which managed to convince Tony to order more than the double amount of clothes, including a tailored suit and an over-coat.

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