That night the hotel was having a party on the roof for Independence Day and while I wanted to go, I was just feeling too awful to go. So Drew went and I didn't miss anything. Apparently their Independence Day is a bit of a dud. Everyone has the day off and a lot of politicians make speeches but that's it. There are no fireworks or parades or anything. That's apparently done in January. So the party was just a bunch of Indians getting drunk. There wasn't even food. So Drew just came back down after five minutes and room service it was!
Looking back, I'm super glad that I didn't plan anything for our days in Delhi. Because they would have been COMPLETELY out the window. Most of the attractions that we wanted to see were outdoors. It was interesting because even though it was the monsoon season and there are normally afternoon showers, there was a storm that came through and it rained all of monday and tuesday. That worked out perfectly. Monday I was sick all day. Tuesday I slept in until about noon and wanted to get out of the hotel since HELLO I'M IN INDIA!!! But it couldn't be too strenuous (I was still feeling bad) and preferably indoors since I didn't particularly feel like getting wet.
So we decided to go see the National Museum! I was excited. If I had read their information correctly, then we could get in for 1 rupee each since we were students (and had our international student IDS on us). Woohoo!!!! However we had to pay 500 rupees to take pictures... boo. Oh well, I wanted pictures and I had budgeted the money anyways since from the guidebooks we were told 250 each for entry. Most of the big monuments and sites in Delhi and Agra don't have student discounts, so this was nice. (We had gotten a student discount in Jaipur though, woohoo!)
It was fun! We got to see the entire museum while taking a nice leisurely pace. There were some really cool things in it too!
Mohini- a female representation of Vishnu (one of the first statues upon entering the museum... um... awesome!)
Chamunda
The ten incarnations of Vishnu (carved in Ivory and painted)
Going throughout the museum was... interesting. It wasn't very well laid out. I had picked up a map of the exhibits and where they were and that wasn't actually accurate. All of the "special exhibits" were closed and not ready yet. And even within the displays that were permanent there was some interesting arrangements.
We decided to go from the top down and the first exhibit was textiles! It looked at different textiles from around India. It was actually pretty neat however it bored Drew. What a surprise. :P
A Maharajah's relaxation room
That set up of the Maharajah's room was actually fairly neat. He had donated all of the room to the museum and so it was fun to see the various things in it from the hookah to the cushions to the chess set made of ivory.
However, the bizarre layout became apparent since the next room was "The West" as in the western world.
First up, a little bit of Mexico:
That was actually pretty cool and quite large, at least 2 feet tall.
A Mayan Pot.
It was funny to one minute be looking at textiles and then on the other side of the display area was Mayan pottery. But it got a little bit more schizophrenic.
A French vellum copy of a page from the Bible, 15th century.
There was a little display for some French and English things and everything else was Mayan pottery or artifacts.
I will say that the neat thing about Indian museums is that you can take pictures of stuff that you would not be able to in the states or the rest of the world. When I saw the Albert Hall museum I got to see a mummy and take pictures of it and some of the artifacts! Here I got to do the same with some Mayan artifacts. That's pretty awesome.
Anyways, so the Indian portions of history and art and various other objects were a little bit better organized. Although there were some random things, like an exhibit on Tibetan Buddhists right before the Indian weapons gallery.
Tibetan Buddhist container from Nepal
The weapons gallery was pretty fun. There were some rather nasty looking weapons of war. But one of the coolest things was a full suit of elephant armor!
My hubby looking awesome. :)
It was cool but funny to see since I forgot that Asian elephants are smaller so it wasn't quite as large or impressive of armor as I would have thought. But then again I wouldn't want to be charged by an elephant no matter how small.
There was a really large display case full of coins. It was cool to see ones that I had seen before and also neat to recognize some just from out stay in Hyderabad. (It had the Charminar on it from when those rulers ruled a larger portion of India).
But one of the cooler ones was one from Alexander the Great!
He is my FAVORITE historical character! Woohoo!
Geek moment aside, it was also fun to see some of the art that was displayed in the museum.
A portrait of Emperor Akbar
A painting of Akbar's court
The Bidding of Yusuf
Babur's Journey
and
The Nativity (yes THAT one)
They were all really intricate and fun to look at. At the very end of the Museum was some Buddhist artifacts. They were pretty neat.
In the class is some holy artifacts from Buddha supposedly. It was kinda funny since there was specifically a sign on the glass covering this shrine that said "do not place money here or pray here"
We decided to eat at the cafe at the museum and it hit the spot. On our way back from the museum we got a friendly auto driver for a good rate and saw a touristy place near our hotel before being dropped off there. We actually saw quite a few things we liked, but since we were only planning on going to the museum, we didn't have any money so we told the guy we'd meet up with him at a certain point the next day.
Since I was still feeling sick we took it easy and I got an early start on sleeping that night. I was determined to go out and SEE Delhi my last day!
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