Tour of Old Delhi

.We began another hot, humid day with breakfast at the hotel's open- air roof top restaurant before meeting our guide for a tour of Old Delhi. Our driver/guide was a Sikh, so our first stop was a Sikh temple (gurdwara) where we checked our shoes (like a coat check) and washed our hands before having an audience with a man who gave us a twenty minute lecture about Sikhism. He then took us into the temple and to the "soup kitchen" where people were mass producing chapatis and cooking in a huge wok type cooking vessel. Ross and Jean and I looked really cute in our bright orange head scarves (RuthAnn had the forethought to bring a scarf of her own).

On to the Red Fort; an imposing red sandstone structure built in the mid-1600's by the Mughal Shah Jahan. Here is where the flag of independent India was raised for the first time in 1947.

The group will be made whole about midnight tonight when the other four members of our group fly in from Kolkata (Calcutta). Tomorrow is a holiday (anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's birth) so we will be cooling our heels prior to finalizing bike delivery, driver and mechanic for the chase vehicle and buying cell phones on Friday. We are planning to negotiate our way out of town on Saturday morning. We have been watching with interest the traffic here and are getting pretty good at being pedestrians! The mix of traffic operates within inches of each other and the corners and sides of most vehicles have scars to prove it.

Please keep the comments coming--we enjoy hearing from you. sr

P.S. Steve P. and other political activists: We have all voted--Canadians and Americans.
Not to worry, Steve--be sure to do your part;o) ra