We arrived in New Delhi, after leaving South Africa and transiting for a few hours through Ethiopia (Addis Ababa) and Bombay. On the flight from Addis Ababa to Bombay, we sat next to several soldiers from the Indian army - apparently, about 1500 Indian soldiers had been stationed on the Ethiopia/Eritrea border for several months as part of a UN peacekeeping force. The soldiers on our plane were going back to India for a couple of weeks on vacation. They were happy to be stationed outside of India as the UN pays them a higher salary compared to what they got paid by the Indian army. We also bought a great CD by Aster Aweke whose style is kinda jazzy or Afrofunky. If you live in or around Wash DC, she plays there quite often.
In Delhi, we had our final wedding reception. It was wonderful to see so many family members and friends.
A good time was had and we all got appropriately drunk... Here're some of the photos from our reception:
We went out several nights in Delhi - the amount of nightclubs, lounges and pubs has increased dramatically over the past few years - there are a bunch of places now that cater to all sorts of crowds. Some of the nightlife we sampled - Turquoise Cottage (rock/grunge- Coldplay, Hoobastank, Nirvana and the cig lighters held up high were in effect), F-Bar (affiliated with Fashion TV-house music, great caipiroshkas, jam-packed on weekends) and Shalom (chilled out lounge & restaurant with great music). We also went to several great restaurants, such as Olive (Mediterranean), Casbah/Spago(Italian-great tiramisu).
Here's a video of F-Bar:
We also attended the wedding and reception of Dev's cousin Abhinav, and his wife Sonal. It was great fun although Dev proceeded to imbibe a little too much alcohol! Here's a photo of Abhinav, Sonal, Smruti and me.
We attempted to be tourists in Delhi as well although social activities tended to take up most of our time! We visited the Museum of Modern Art (next to India Gate) which had a good exhibition on 50 years of modern art in India - some of painters represented there were Rabindranath Tagore, Amrita Shergil, Jatin Das and lots of others.
We also did the India Gate thing... brought back some memories of going there for ice-cream 20 years ago. Also watched cricket being played on the maidans around India Gate. Smruti got some henna done on her hand from a couple of girls from Rajasthan.
We visited the Nehru museum at Trimurti Bhavan which is where Jawaharlal Nehru used to stay and work when he was Prime Minister of India in the late 40's and 50's. The house itself had an interesting set of exhibits on the independence movement, including a couple of mentions of my grand-uncle, Deshapriya Jatindra Mohan Sengupta, and his wife, Nellie Sengupta. Click here for a short 1-page biography on the two.
We made the mistake of going for a show to the Nehru Planetarium - we ended up sitting in the middle of 300 screaming 10 year olds watching a really bad production overhead. I kept getting tickled on the head by the kids sitting behind me. The person running the screening kept screaming at the kids to shut-up and all the school-teachers were too busy talking on their mobile phones to keep the kids in order.
And finally, we also went to see a polo match at the Delhi Racecourse grounds. Surprisingly action-packed game with horses racing around a huge field. The Maharaja of Kashmir was there. Apparently, the Indian team does reasonably well on the global polo scene, along with other countries such as Argentina. The players had names such as Haunchy and Brigadier Singh. We also saw the distinctly Raj-era sight of a group of Sikh bagpipers playing ridiculously bad Indian filmi tunes at the end of each chukker. The British legacy is alive and well in India (I guess)...
We also visited a gold shop. Lots of bling bling..
We also visited a mall for some shopping... 400 malls being built in India right now...
-Dev
I didn't know dev was a sengupta...maybe we're related!
Thanks for educating & entertaining with your blog. Merry x-mas, and may your happy travels continue.
Posted by: Chaitee | Saturday, December 25, 2004 at 04:52 PM