We had a slow morning after a late night. After breakfast at home, we took a rickshaw to the Gandhi Smriti. Or at least we tried to. The rickshaw driver headed, as it turned out, to the Gandhi museum. At one point I noticed him driving through a part of town I didn't expect to be near and discovered his error. He refused to bring us to where we wanted to go and instead dropped us off at random. We refused to pay him. What a waste of time. It must've cost us an hour.
Instead of proceeding directly to the smriti from where we were, we grabbed a rickshaw to Connaught Place so J and N could look into flights for the rest of their trip (after I'd have gone) and so we could all mail postcards.
Finally, we grabbed a rickshaw to the smriti. (I wrote in my notes: "hopefully, smriti next.") I followed our location on the map. Indeed, when we got close to the destination, the driver admitted he also didn't know precisely where it was. He was pretty close--about a block or two away--and we directed him. Oy.
The smriti has a lot about Gandhi, his life, his goals, India's independence, and more. It includes a substantial, enormous museum. I got tired of it before I saw everything. I did see a lot more about British colonization than I expected. I also saw a neat doll exhibit with dioramas of scenes from Gandhi's life. One area of the smriti is obsessed with the last 48 hours of Gandhi's life. It's fairly morbid. All in all, it was definitely a cool place to visit.
After some trouble finding a rickshaw (because the smriti is in a residential neighborhood and they don't really just wander by), we managed to make it to Khan Market for Chokola. We enjoyed our drinks at Chokola so much during our previous visit (old pictures) near the beginning of my trip, we decided to return for a mid-afternoon snack. It didn't disappoint.
In the evening, we joined two of our host's friends and followed their suggestion to go to Drums of Heaven for Chinese food. It wasn't bad, but wasn't particularly good either. Simply fine. The best part of the meal were the starters: fried (unidentifiable) vegetables and a coriander soup (which I'd never seen before). Due to the atmosphere and lighting (very dark) and picture exhaustion, I didn't take any pictures.
Here are the few pictures I did take during the day.
India: Oct 23: Gandhi Smitri, and Chokola (again)
Posted by mark at Thursday, June 26, 2008
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