Red Fort- Old Delhi- October 8

cooksinindia
Ok, so I had to cheat a little to get this photo-thank you Google images. Mike has the camera and I hope he is taking some amazing photos to share with us all. It makes me think of when my Grandparents were doing their travels around the world and they would buy slides of all of the sights they had seen. Grandma Kimes reasoned that the store bought slides were much better than she could have taken and she was right- she always cut the heads off of her photographic subjects.

Anyways, back to the Red Fort. The fort was built in the 1600's by Shah Jahan- same emperor who built the Taj Mahal. He was planning to move the capital of his empire here to Delhi from Agra but was unfortunately imprisoned by his son and ended up spending the rest of his days in the other red fort in Agra gazing across the river at the Taj Mahal.

The fort is huge. 2km across with walls that are from 18m to 33m high surrounded by a wide moat. Inside are mosques, tombs and the apartments of the Mughal emperor and his family. The public entrance is at the Lahore Gate which is pictured. Each Independence day the Prime Minister gives a speech here.

The fort is in Old Delhi across from Chandni Chowk and Jami Masjid (we visited those on a different day.) We went to the fort on Sunday afternoon which was very busy. The streets of Chandni Chowk were just packed with people. I thought it might be a bit much for the kids so we just toured it from the car. It is fun to observe all that hustle and bustle.

Today I took my last ride into Delhi to finish up a few things. As I sat in the car I was feeling very sad about leaving. It is such an energetic, interesting city and country. There is never a shortage of things to look at, taste, smell, hear. I am particularly sad that we'll miss Diwali. It is the biggest holiday of the year- on the scale of Christmas in the US. It happens in two weeks and it is a wonderful time to be here. Once we decided to come back I couldn't convince Quinn and Grant to stay the extra two weeks and I really think it best that they get back into a routine. I also don't want them to miss another 2 weeks of school. They have enough catching up to do as it is. I know I'll be back someday for Diwali.

The most wonderful thing about this experience has definitely been the people we have encountered. We have been offered such amazing hospitality at every turn. I also admire how the Indian people are so passionate about preserving their culture. Gandhi said "A nation's culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people." This is a very rich culture indeed because the people here have most generous hearts.

Mike called today from Nepal. He said that he and the other teachers went to the embassy first thing this morning, dropped off their passports and were told to come back this afternoon. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for them. Mike is very anxious to be in the classroom fulltime. He will be back tomorrow at around 5pm. We'll have a few hours and then we need to head to the airport for our flight back. I'm glad we'll at least have a chance to say goodbye.

Grant is bugging me to get on the computer so I'll close for now.