Finishing off the Bucket List!

This weekend, we polished off the last few things left to do on our Delhi bucket list. 

It began with a trip to the National Museum. By showing our student cards we got in for just 1 rupee each (about 1p!) and wandered around. The building was full of art and artefacts from throughout India's history, from ancient civilisations right up to the modern day. Some of the most impressive objects were those intricately carved in marble and ivory. One of our favourites was a carved ivory tusk - the whole tusk was covered with tiny carved scenes telling the story of the life of the Buddha, a really beautiful object. 

The amazing carved tusk

Up close to one of the tiny scenes from the Buddha's life

One exhibition that had been recommended to us was that of the miniature paintings. These are an old tradition in certain parts of India, and many of them were depicting scenes involving Hindu Gods. They were incredible - even the most minute figure and animal in these tiny paintings was painted in exquisite detail.

This picture was about 10cm wide, and you can see the amazing detail on the faces here

What we really came to see though was a full suit of armour for an elephant, a pretty impressive sight! There was also a musical instrument gallery full of all sorts of instruments from recognisable clarinets and brass instruments to sitars, 5ft long pipes and strange looking S-shaped keyed horns!

An armoured elephant!

Emma, very excited to find a suit of armour for an elephant!

Museum number one done, we headed off to the second one. Before we came to Delhi, a friend of Emma's recommended the National Rail Museum to her (thanks Peter!), so we had put that on our list of things to see.

Oddly for a rail museum one of the first things we came across was the skull of an elephant! However, this was an elephant which in 1894 had an unfortunate collision with an Indian mail train, in which the impact managed to derail the engine and seven carriages. Sadly the elephant was killed - one of the tusks is displayed in the London office, the train driver kept the other, and the skull is on display here. Quite a story!

The skull of the unfortunate elephant

We then had a ride on the "Toy Train". We were the only adults there who weren't accompanying small children, but we had a great time, and it was also a great way to see the many old trains found around the site of the museum as we whistled past!

Michaela, enthralled by the toy train ride!

Emma poses with the toy train!

Then we got a chance to go and look at all those trains. It was great to see so many old trains, but in a way it did feel a bit like a train graveyard. A lot of them were in quite a bad state of disrepair, with parts of them rotting, rusting and falling off. You could climb up into the engine of some of them, where of course you had to pretend to be a train driver!

I wonder what this one does...

All aboard!

There were a few Maharaja carriages as well as train engines - these were very fancy carriages for royalty and leaders to travel in. You could just imagine how luxurious they would have been. From beautifully painted balconies, to ornate gold ceilings just visible on peering through the windows, they really were fit for a king. 

All museumed out, we stopped off at a tiny market off the beaten track that we just happened to spot as small print in the guide book. It was an amazing place - all the shops were real aladdin caves, with brass statues, furniture, lamps, compasses, boxes, pots, pans and anything else you could think of piled from floor to ceiling! Everything was covered in dust and trying to look at anything more closely was a bit like playing giant jenga. One of our favourite things that they sold were beautifully painted doorknobs, which seemed to be the speciality of this area! 

Squeezed in the middle of these curious shops was a tiny tea shop. When we went in to take a look around, we were brewed a cup of rare speciality tea, given a seat and told that it was a pleasure to sell tea to the British! It was only when sipping on our tea that we noticed a signed picture of an aeroplane on the wall to the man who ran the shop from "the crew of Airforce One!". It was obviously great tea! 

Feeling refreshed, we headed off to another tomb as the sun was low in the sky. This one was Safdarjang's Tomb, and is often described as "the last flicker in the dying lamp of Mughal architecture of Delhi". It was very similar to Humayun's Tomb that we had previously visited, but smaller. The low sunlight really added to the beauty and we had fun playing around taking photos! 

The sun starting to set behind Safdarjang's Tomb

Obligatory "we were here" photo

Emma practices her yoga!

We finished off the busy day by going to the beautiful Lodi garden restaurant and having our first taste of Indian wine, which was really good. A great end to a busy day! 

The beautiful Lodi Garden Restaurant by night