Runes, Temples, and a Mosque

Wifi was $20 (USD) per day in Deli, and I wasn't in the hotel enough to make it worth it. Got to Agra today and its only $12, so I got some catch-up work to do.

28th -
About all we did Monday was fly from Varanasi to Deli, and checked into the hotel. I went for a solo walk about to see what I could see, and as it turns out, our hotel was in a crappy spot for such an exercise. I walked around for an hour through essentially residential type neighborhoods. Saw lots of cigarette venders, and some fruit/veggie stands, but nothing really of interest. After an hour I got bored and jumped into a tricycle-rickshaw back to the hotel. Just across the street from the hotel was the touristy shopping with bars and restaurants. I got some domino's pizza and sat at a bar reading The Diamond Age. Got back to the hotel before 9. Should have let my mom know I was back safe because she was worried about me all night. Heh, oops.

29th
Tuesday we got up early, visited some ruins of some Hindu buildings that had being conquered by Muslims, then the Muslims build on top of the Hindu buildings extending them. Seriously amazing stone carving. After that we visited the Lotus temple. Stunning. Elegant. A mighty place to behold. After that we visited a (the?) Krishna temple. A huge Hindu complex with many rooms and shrines. Our guide that day was a practicing Hindu. We could tell because when he entered this temple, he got down on his knees and touched his forehead to the floor in front of the primary shrine in the entrance. The ruins were very impressive for the intricacy of the designs. The Lotus temple was epic in its scale, and elegance. They made the Krishna temple pale in comparison... which is quite a feat considering the majesty of the temple.

30th
On Wednesday we visited the world's largest Hindu temple. It was large. It was epically large. It was so large and grand and magnificent and big and huge... I'd need to get a thesaurus and add another dozen or so adjectives to explain how big it was. It was very recently build (20th century) and man-oh-man was it big. There was also this lotus garden with a bunch of quotes from various well respected people from cultures and tribes all across the planet all saying pro-religious stuff.

I find it deeply cynical to quote people who were either atheist or at best deists to promote theism. The 3 grossest offenses were Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, and Einstein. There were also a couple quotes that weren't positive at all, just atheist bashing that I didn't much appreciate.

We got a bicycle-rickshaw ride through a crazy market (youtube video to come) and then visited our first Mosque. After the details in the ruins the day before, and the grandeur of the Lotus temple, the Mosque was a little boring. How quickly we become so cynical.