Festivities and Fun

Delhi had a festive air about it as people were busy shopping, visiting monuments and sharing special meals with family.  It was the Hindu festival of Dusshera, which lasts a week, as well as the convergence of other celebrations. Eid al Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, is the four day Muslim celebration which marks Isaac's faithfulness to God in his willingness to sacrifice his son.  And the Hindu Durga Puga celebrates the triumph of the warrior goddess Durga over the demon Mahishasura.  She is a mighty warrior and her effigies are depicted with 10 arms, each holding a different weapon.

Dusshera is a Hindu festival that celebrates the triumph of good over evil.  Effigies of paper mache'  standing up to 14 feet tall are made of the main characters in the story.  They are King Rama (seventh avatar of Vishnu) and his lovely wife Sita, the demon Ravanna who abducted the lovely Sita to his kingdom, Rama's brother and their follower Laksmana, their follower Hanuman and an army of monkeys.  The latter rescued the lovely Sita and brought her home to Rama.  But Rama became jealous thinking about what Hanuman may have been up to with Sita.  She pledged that she had always been true to Rama, and to prove it offered to walk through coals of fire.  She does and the story ends happily ever after.  Clearly the Ramayana was written long before anyone thought of women's lib.  The celebration ends with the burning of Ravanna's effigy and/or throwing all the effigies into the sea.

Because we were in Delhi at the time of Dusshera, we were able to participate in many traffic jams.  Probably we'll avoid that next year.

Now to the FUN list
The trouble with talking about fun is that it doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. But here is my own, personal fun list from our time in Delhi.

A guide who gave a quiz at the end of the day.  With prizes. And was amazed at the group's attentiveness to his talks

The same Delhi guide who got us a discount at "Oudh", an exceedingly nice restaurant in an exceedingly grand restaurant

Fun with the little group of people who weren't too tired to go out for dinner at the nice restaurant.

A great dinner with a very generous gin and tonic and ALOT of ice.

Shopping at a  crowded little shop at the very height of a sale with many women and salespeople all around   Some of our women got really pretty Indian outfits that they wore during the trip at very little cost.

Seeing our folks enjoy shopping and eating at Dilli Haat, a center for the display and sale of goods and foods representing various parts of India

The bicycle rickshaw ride through Chandni Chowk, a huge market in the midst of Old Delhi was highly entertaining to our guests.

Enjoying India with first time visitors