Sylvia's Journal

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We finally got to be tourists and visited, at long last, Humayoon’s tomb – another magnificent piece of Mughal architecture. We arrived early and had the place nearly to ourselves. Things start late in Delhi – the city wakes up when in Kabul we already have a quarter of the workday behind us. We just left when over a hundred noisy school kids overran the place like a swarm of bees.

Humayoon’s tomb and the walled garden have been restored, much like Babur’s garden in Kabul, with the help of the Aga Khan Trust, the former project puny compared with this one. The educational exhibit showed how the Persian carpet designs (for indoors) mimic the outdoor designs for gardens. The crossover was illustrated by the picture of a carpet from Mashad with gardens on top and the geometrical design of the Persian ‘charbagh’ garden at the bottom. The word paradise, we learned, comes from the Persian words paira daeza, meaning walled garden.

We visited a part of the National Museum until our feet hurt and we felt like taking a nap. From the textile exhibit we learned the various kinds of embroidery, printing, and how gold was applied to cloth. Once again the Persian legacy was everywhere, from the gold threaded textiles to the miniatures depicting Babur and his entourage.

I returned to the tribal areas market and the exhibit on Indian landscapes so Axel could enjoy it as well – but the mounting heat and our aching feet soon led us back to our hotel where we collapsed.

For dinner we made reservations in a lovely restaurant with the very appropriate name of ‘Magique’ in what seems to be a newly developed area of the city – called the Garden of the Five Senses. We ate outside in a garden filled with lanterns, candles, flowers and trees – indeed a garden to delight at least three of our senses (sight, taste, smell) – whatever was supposed to delight our auditory senses was drowned out by being located right underneath the flight path to Indira Ghandi International Airport.