Day 480 - Rickshaws, forts, mosques, tombs and mobs

As our train to Gorakhpur doesn't leave until 8pm tonight we spent the day seeing some of Delhi's sights - the only problem being that most things are closed on Mondays so our options were limited!

We caught our first rickshaw in India and weaved our way through the traffic to Purana Qila, an old Afghan Fort. Here we were surprised at the absolute peacefulness and lack of people at the fort set in a green manicured garden, so we enjoyed wandering through the tombs and the mosque of Sher Shah (now under intense, but not so authenic renovation) almost by ourselves.

We then waved down another rickshaw and made our way to Humayun's Tomb, a beautiful Mughal tomb made from white and red sand stone and marble in the 16th Century.

The Taj Mahal is even supposed to be modelled on this amazing tomb and garden!! We were basically spellbound by the magnificent piece of architecture and took our time wandering around allowing our eyes to absorb all the details despite dripping in the almost 40 degree humid heat!

Back at the main Bazaar we settled in for a lesuirely lunch and savoured the icy cold drinks and yummy Indian food.

While we were eating dinner we experienced our first blackout with many more to come ...

As the day slipped away we made our way to the New Delhi train station where clusters of people sleep on the floor in any space they can find. We managed to get to the right place after a lot of walking up and down the crazy busy platforms, and had to wait almost an hour as our train was running late (seems to be the norm in India). We weren't starved of things to look at while waiting though, as we had thousands of people to observe: porters carrying gigantic loads balanced on their heads, bare footed women in gorgeous bright saris, and of course a lot of noise to add to that! When our train arrived we watched in amazed horror as guards used sticks to beat away passengers desperate to claim a spot in general section where there are no allocated seats. We were grateful to have allocated beds in our air-con carriage!!

Adlibing it to the train station.