Delhi Darshan Day 6- Mughal Gardens, CP and J & K- 1st March 2009

Was that expected? I don’t think so. I thought Delhi Darshan was over in January! Well, the day started off as usual. I was back from hostel since two days after my exams got over.

I woke up at around 10 and then around 11, uncle announced that we were going to the Mughal Gardens. I had wanted to visit the Mughal Gardens since I read about them in Social Studies in Class 3 or 4. But as February and March was always school-time, I had never had a chance to visit Delhi. And now, I am here.

We (that includes Uncle, Aunty, their two sons and me) started from home around 1:35 PM and were at Gate no. 35 of Rashtrapati Bhavan at 2:10. What a crowd! The last time I visited this place was on 3rd Jan for the Nature Trail and then not even a single human was seen anywhere except may be the security guards! And now, there was no place to park the car! We managed somehow to find a place (thanks to my aunty) and then, leaving our cell phones and camera in the car, entered the crowd. We entered through two security checks and I must admit that there is such a strong security there. So strong that I entered inside unnoticed by two security personnel sitting on armchairs and checking visitors one by one. Half the people were going in without any check!!!

As we entered the President’s Estates and moved towards the place where the crowd was moving, we first saw the Musical Fountain that we had seen during the Nature Trail and then entered the main Mughal Gardens. OK, one question: what picture do you form of the place? Beautiful? Full of flowers? Flowers from all over the world? Well, may be you are right. The place was surely beautiful and full of flowers but I didn’t find it up to my expectations!

Ice berg, Eiffel tower, etc. Surely you have heard of these. I too have heard. Can you tell what these are? Simple, right? Big ice piece and Paris… Thought something like this? That’s ok but did you know that these are names of flowers? No? Even I didn’t but that was before visiting Mughal Gardens. The flowers were beautiful but now they were not so bright. They were drying. When the Gardens open in February, the first week is the best time to visit it. We went through the Spiritual Garden, Herbal Garden,Circular Garden (that was the best part) and of course the Rose garden. We were out by 4 PM and were on the move again.

We thought of going to Humayun’s Tomb then and moved towards Connaught Place. On the way, Aunty remembered the oldest Hanuman Mandir at CP and we visited the shrine. We got some kachodis from the place as it is known for its delicious kachodis. We then had snacks at Delhi Tourism’s Coffee Home and then were back on track...

Plans do change, right? Forgetting Humayun’s Tomb we were moving in CP when Uncle remembered the newly opened Metro Museum at Patel Chowk metro station, about which we had never even heard. After asking for directions from some people, we reached the Metro station and had a look at the timings. The museum was open from 10 AM till 4 PM and now it was just 5:30 PM. A wait of just 16 and a half hour would lead us inside the museum. We thought this was quite a long wait, don’t you agree?

We moved on and were almost returning home. On Janpath (let me inform the non-Delhities, Janpath is the road crossing Rajpath and Rajpath is the road between India Gate and Rashtrapati Bhavan where we have the Republic Day parade) we saw a Jammu and Kashmir cultural festival at Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and parked our car to have a quick look around (which eventually turned into almost 2 hours).

J & K festival but sellers from all over the country were selling their handicrafts. Why don’t you have a pictorial look of the place? After all, every picture tells a story...

We moved out of the place around 7:15 PM and thus was the end of Delhi Darshan Day 6. More Delhi Darshan Days…are they coming? Let’s hope.