Sylvia's Journal

I arrived at the end of the morning in a very hot and humid in Delhi. Kerala seemed cool in comparison. I felt adventuresome and took the metro into town which turned out not all that adventuresome until I arrived at the railway station and was thrown into the chaos of downtown.

I remembered the warning in the guidebook about touts. A random tuktuk was going to charge me ten times the going rate for a local without luggage and five times the prepaid rate for a foreigner with luggage. I was able to wriggle loose.

The hotel is nice if you don’t mind not having a window. The manager explained that windows let in heat and noise and one is better off without them in this part of town and this time of the year. I suppose if you only need the room for sleeping the absence of daylight is OK.

I hired a taxi and driver for the day and finally visited the Craft Museum Axel and I didn’t get to visit the last time we were here. There were no tourists, not even Indians so I had the place to myself. But I soon found out why there was no one there – no person in his or her right mind would go to a museum that did not have AC during the middle of the day.

On the suggestion of one of the bride’s uncles who lives in Delhi I told the driver to take me to Akshardham across the Yamuna River. He had told me it was a spectacular new building put together using ancient crafts. That was true. But what he had not told me was that the entire complex was also a religious theme park. More about it in a next post.