The view from the hotel restaurant was a very exciting one. The dining room is in the top floor of the hotel and we could see most of Connaught Circus, the railway station, etc. The breakfast buffet had both western and Indian components, and we all had a nice breakfast at the hotel. Afterwards, we started the day with a visit to the following:
- Jumma Masjid. This is believed to be India's largest mosque. Here, men were required to don a lungi around their waist as part of the respect to the decorum of the temple. Conveniently, there was a lungi vendor who would rent one out; it was expected that he would be compensated for making the lungi readily available.
- Red Fort
- Rajghat. It was quite emotional (for me) to see Rajghat; although I had seen it before when I was several years younger, seeing the eternal fire burning alongside this time reminded how everlasting Mahatma Gandhi's contribution to India has been. It was extremely hot to be near the monument, though, because of the temperature and the heat that came out of stone and/or concrete paving.
- Humayun's Tomb
- Qutb Minar
Around 3:00 PM, the car dropped us off for lunch near our hotel: the Travel Agency felt it had completed the agreed-upon itinerary and therefore had no obligation to provide us with local transport for the rest of the evening! This was the effect of the 8 hour, 80 kilometer rental that the Travel Agency had arranged for us!!
The hotel had explained to us earlier in the day that we had been given by mistake a room that was considered more expensive than what we had already paid for. Would we please move to a "lesser" room later that day? Talk about excellent human factors relationship! We obliged anyway, although I later pointed out to them that this kind of treatment is not what I would expect of an expensive hotel in the heart of New Delhi.
Thanks to one of my friends, we were able to move around in a car in the evening and, in fact, I was able to buy a pair of slippers for myself: I had forgotten to pack mine into my bags when we started the tour. We had nice dinner at the Saravana Bhavan on Janpath and, by now I had rediscovered the importance of vanilla milkshake along with my son. Janpath, I recalled, was where some of the early Prime Ministers' residence was located.
