Day Tour of Old Delhi and New Delhi...

I booked myself on an AC bus for a full day tour for £5.30 :)


Due to terrorism, many shrines and other places do not allow photos inside..

The first was this Hindu shrine.. the Lakshmi Narayan temple.. inside i recognised the Hindu God of Wealth, and donated 10 rupees hoping that a bit of fortune would come my way after blowing so much on this year out...





A memorial to Ghandhi and other leaders..




The memorial to Indira Ghandhi (who was assassinated by her 2 Sikh body guards after ordering the storming of the Golden temple in Amritsar by the Indian army, to oust a Sikh separatist at the time...)
Although the Indian security service recommended she change her body-guards, she refused believing their allegiance to the Indian state would not waiver...she was wrong...

Right picture, the clothes she wore when assasinated..




The glass plaque shows the place where she fell:





Also, in this memorial was another to Ragiv Ghandhi, Indira Ghandhi's son..He was also assassinated but by a female suicide bomber sent by the Sri Lankan terrorist group, the LTTE. The history around this was of great interest to me, as i remember the events of the time.

The LTTE had been funded, first by Indira Ghandhi's and then Ragiv Ghandhi's government as they sought to destabilise Sri Lanka, which during the 70s was growing into a Singapore-like state...
After 10 years of the civil war that followed, the Sri Lankan army had cornered the LTTE to a small area in northern Sri Lanka and were poised to defeat it.

At this point the Indian government forced Sri Lanka into signing a peace accord and sent a contingent of the army as an 'Indian Peace Keeping Force' (IPKF). Sri Lankans were insensed, both by the denial of their victory and the presence of Indian soldiers on their soil. When he arrived in Sri Lanka, one of the Naval guard of honour attacked him with the butt of his rifle...

This is a video of the incident displayed by a pro-terrorist website...no idea what they're saying...it's in tamil...

BTW, the naval soldier was severly beaten after this attack, but became a hero after leaving military prison...

Before too long, squirmishes broke out between the LTTE and Inidan army. The Sri Lankan government switched sides and began secretly arming the LTTE. In the ensuing battle, the LTTE who were much better trained, massacred 2000 IPKF soldiers before Ghandhi withdrew the force. I felt sorry for these soldiers who were just pawns of the government. It was a dirty war that took a further 15 years to end. In retaliation for fighting with them, the LTTE sent a female suicide bomber to kill Ghandhi at a rally in India. So it was, the man who had initially helped fund these terrorists was eventually eliminated by them.

The remains of his trousers are displayed :

Next we went to see the government buildings (the huge circular Parliment House is on the right) :


I've noticed the women in this state and in Punjab state wear really colourful pyjama-like dresses (and many of these women are strikingly beautiful...). I tried, surreptitiously, to take a picture of the pretty girl in our tour group in the red dress, but her mother got in the way...




One of me with a teacher from the eastern Assam region, in our group...he was a really lovely guy...




We stopped for lunch at a Thali restaurant... the food was DEE-LICIOUS and cost £1.50 with a coke :) whohoo!





Later in the afternoon we visited many other sites, but the best was that of the Qutb Minar, built by a muslim sultan Qutb-ud-din :












Lastly, we visited the site where Ghandhi (the father of India) as described by my fellow tour-folk was assassinated. It was a very peaceful site and fitting for such a great, humble and peaceful man..




The tour didn't cover the Red Fort or (Mughal Emperor) Huyaman's tomb.. but i'll cover these on my return from Rajasthan..