Hursts in India

As our days in Delhi are numbered and the weather is cool, we decided to drop everything on Monday, December 9 and visit Hauz Khas (Farsi for "royal tank" or "reservoir"), a part of city we had yet to explore.  A reservoir was built here by Sultan Alauddin Khalji who ruled from 1296 to 1316 to supply water to the inhabitants of Siri Fort, the "second city" of Delhi.  The neighborhood is full of tombs of Delhi royalty from the 14th to 16th centuries and other monuments including this mosque.   The mosque and this tomb and others are located in Deer Park. From there we walked through the urbanized village of Hauz Khas to the ruins of an Islamic seminary situated around the reservoir. The madrasa was established in 1352.  Supported by the Sultans of Delhi, it was considered to be the largest and best equipped of anywhere in the world.  It is built in an "L" shape around a corner of the tank and has steps leading down...

Its beginning to feel like Christmas around here.  On Tuesday we decorated cookies with the Udayan girls.  They had never done anything like it before and thoroughly enjoyed it. Thursday we had eight people over to work on baby hats and quilts.  Elder Ravi made this little blue hat and as he pulled the strings at the end and the knit tube closed at the top he lit up.  "I have made a hat!" he said. Shivani, one of our darling YSAs also made a hat.  Her comment on Facebook was "First time I tried a loom hat for service project.  I'm lucky that I got a chance to contribute in this service project." Thursday morning we went to Old Delhi with Jarom Drummond and his friend Ryan to Haji Shabrati Nihari Wale for nihari, a stew of slow cooked beef or goat shanks.  According to tradition it cooks all night and is eaten in the morning.  "In some restaurants, a few kilos from each day's leftover Nihari is added to the next day's pot....

Monday morning we drove to Agra where we visited the Mughal fort there. Next stop was the Taj Mahal. Tuesday morning we headed for Jaipur stopping at Fatehpur Sikri to see the Emperor Akbar's fort and palace from which he ruled for 1571 to 1585. We also stopped at the spectacular Chant Baori stepwell in Abhaneri.   Both sites are beautifully preserved.   The drive itself between Agra and Jaipur was pretty interesting too.   My favorite sight were the large, ungainly camels pulling heavy wooden carts and goatherds with their flocks alongside the road.  We passed into Rajasthan and arrived at Jaipur in the early evening at our funky heritage hotel, the Nila Bagh Palace, built in 1872.    Wednesday we “did” Jaipur starting at the Hawa Mahal which features an undulating façade of multiple windows (almost Guadiesque) from which the royal woman could observe the world while remaining unseen.  Next was the Amer F...