I’ve come down with another cold, which sucks. Yesterday I started sneezing and had a headache. I was hoping it was just a reaction to the pollution, but unfortunately it has developed into a full blown sinus cold. Ugh. Second one on this trip.
Anyway, Yanmei wanted to go shopping and we heard about Dilli Haat which is an open air market. We took the metro to get there, and it was 100 rupees entrance fee (for foreigners). They should probably let foreigners in for free since I suspect we end up overpaying for everything we buy. Actually they should let everyone in free, because the place was a ghost town.
Maybe the problem was that even though they had 100s of shops there was very little variety. There were ten different shops, repeated a dozen times right down to having the same signs, same patterns on materials, etc. The shops were: dresses, scarves, rugs, shoes, fabrics, jewelry, art (same “hand painted” pictures in each one), brass statues, purses, and wood boxes and bowls.
Caught the guy modeling a dress for Yanmei, hehehe. They were pretty desperate to make sales, offering “first customer of the day” discounts. Overall it was disappointing, I’m sure there are lots of better places to shop in Delhi, I’m not sure why it has a good rating on TripAdvisor.
After Dilli Haat we went to Qutub Minar. This is one of the most famous sites in Delhi. If you’ve heard of the Iron pillar of Delhi that doesn’t rust, that is at Qutub Minar. The main attraction it the Qutub Minar itself which is a victory tower built in the 12th century.
The site happens to be on the approach to the airport, so there are a lot of planes flying over.
The Iron pillar was thought to be miraculous for many years because it is wrought iron, yet doesn’t rust or corrode even though it has been exposed to the elements for centuries. It is now understood how it works, an explanation is in the link above. It is estimated to be over 1600 years old so it significantly predates Qutub Minar and was moved there at some point.
Qutub Minar was definitely worth visiting.
After that we headed back to our hotel.
David