My friend Annemarie came to visit me in Delhi. On the first day we slept in as she had arrived in the night. We then went to see the qutub minar. After that we went shopping for a jacket, since I had lost mine in Udaipur. This hunt brought us to a shopping mall, where they had the Just Dance India final. We watched some average, many good and some amazing performances. We joked about the moderator who always gave the same comment: "Well thank you so much, that was amazing." We stayed for hours watching the mostly hip hop performance of single dancers and groups.
The next day we did some sight seeing. We started with Hamayuns tomb. He was the second Mugal in India and his tomb was impressive. We admired it from everyone side and it looked equally great. As it was Sunday many schools did an excursion there, too. This meant hundreds of kids would greet us with a happy "hello" and occasionally ask "what is your name" or "what is your country".
From there we walked to the lotus temple. We tried negotiating a rickshaw every now and then, but they always asked for ridiculous prices being ten times the normal fair. We enjoyed walking anyway. This gave Annemarie the chance to see the city better and we stopped at different street food or juice stands.
The lotus temple had very nice architecture and well organised. A long queue was constantly moving until one was let in. This way it was not too full inside. The temple is open to all religions so the only thing inside was silence, and no idols.
After that we went to the Hindu temple where the Hare Krishna, Hare Rama mantra was repeatedly sung.
Then we went to my favourite building in the world, he Akhshardham temple in Delhi. Like in Ahmadabad, no photos were allowed. You can google it, but actually no photo can capture the beauty of that place really. The building itself is huge and pretty. I find the religion Swaminarian and the stories very interesting. The main shrine is so stunning to me, we stood there for at least 15 minutes admiring how nicely it was made. There were great golden sculptures, many smaller elephants, many rubies and shiny lights and it just fit together so perfectly.
We spent many hours at Akhshardham so when we got out it was dark already. We took the metro to chandni chawk where I hoped to find the "chicken street", which I remembered from my last Delhi visit. We didn't.
Instead we landed in a Gurudwada, a temple of the Sikh religion. We sat there for a while and listened to the Sikh praising songs. Then we went to a Hindu temple. A priest came up to us and showed us around, explaining which Gods the idols display.
Then we decided to have a look at a building decorated with nice lights. It turned out to be a church. Immediately someone offered us some free coffee. We stood there watching the choir sing Christmas songs and Santa dancing to them. Until then, I didn't have any "Christmas feeling". But on Christmas eve, I finally got it. After the Christmas story was told (in Hindi) we stayed for a few more minutes. It was very nice when after midnight on the 25th everyone shook hands wishing each other a Merry Christmas. This was a long and fantastic day so we took the cab back.
We got off a bit too early and heard some music. We followed it and found what we thought was a wedding. We were later told it was a religious festival, which all religions could celebrate. Sikhs and Hindus were dancing to the much too loud music. Then we got stuffed with some more free food. Now that was definitely enough for that day.
On Christmas day we started off by going to the big Gurudwada. There we had some tea, a snack and got talking to a Sikh. Unfortunately I did not understand his English that well. Somehow the day just passed and in the evening went to chandni chowk again. We discovered a gigantic mosque. Because it was after sunset we could not go inside. This time we did find the chicken street, where many restaurant grilled some amazing chicken. After stuffing ourselves with the most delicious butter chicken and chicken tikka we returned back from our last evening in Delhi.
