Temples, Tombs and Cauliflower

Swaminarayan Akshardham Temple

I liked this sign

Lodi Garden Tombs

We started the day by picking up our friend John Carpenter, who lives in San Francisco, he will be joining us for part of our India journey. Our first destination was to drive to visit Swaminarayan Akshardham. Cathy and I had never heard of this new Hindu Temple Complex and didn’t know what to expect.

It is mindblowing! This Temple is for the Swaminarayan branch of Hinduism. It was founded relatively recently within the last 200 years. The Temple complex is immense – it is like an airport in size and security. The Temple provides its own security besides the regular Delhi Police. You are x-rayed and physically patted down to enter. No Camera, Pens, books, DVD, the list is endless of what you can’t bring in. The complex itself is new, and huge, and opulent in a very to us non-spiritual way. It is as if in Las Vegas besides all of the themed casinos that are over the top, someone decided to build a theme Hindu Temple that would top all of the casinos. It speaks of unlimited money. I am sure to the devotes it is a very touching temple, to us it was just amazing set of structures. I summed it up by saying it was like the Temple was designed to impress man, not God. At any rate, if you are ever in Delhi be sure to visit this complex. You will never see anything like it anywhere.

I need to buy some outfits for a Bollywood wedding we will be going to in May, and we went to Kahn Market to a designer store for men’s clothing, the prices were astronomical and I decided to put off purchasing an outfit. After not purchasing anything it was on to a great lunch at Pindi a restaurant that specializes in chicken dishes. This restaurant is a keeper. We very much enjoyed the food. A note on the Blog: Cathy and I started this before there were blogging applications as a hand written journal of our travels. We wanted to document what we did and where we did it, so we would be able to remember our experiences. It came in handy today, when we knew we wanted to return to dinner to restaurant we had eaten at years ago in Delhi. All we remembered was how good it was and how much I liked the Manchurian Cauliflower. It was an easy task to search the travel blogs and find the name of the forgotten restaurant.

After lunch we went to Lodi Gardens. These gardens are frequented by families having picnics on the grounds that surround the ancient Lodi Dynasty Tombs. Delhi is sprinkled with these monuments from its past 8 incarnations. After spending time in the Gardens and Tombs, we returned to Hauz Khas, to pickup a dress that was altered for Cathy. At least she has something to wear to the wedding. Back to the Imperial Hotel for a bottle of wine, then off to Veda Restaurant for the Best Manchurian Cauliflower ever! We had lots of food that was leftover and we asked the restaurant to pack it up. In the States, of course, we always take leftovers home, in India apparently they don’t. We gave the leftovers to our taxi driver and said he should eat it or give it to some homeless. Who knows what happened to it.

We then went back to the hotel, to pack for our flight tomorrow morning to see the erotic sculptures at Khajuraho.