All too soon, our mini vacation in Kerala came to an end and we flew back to Delhi for the last wedding ceremony. In the morning, Maggie and I wanted to check out another Delhi site, Humayan’s Tomb, and everyone wanted to go shopping before the reception that night, so we got a really early start on the site seeing, arriving before the monument even opened. We had to wait about 45 minutes to be let in, but it was worth it. It was so quiet at this time of day and I loved the light. It made for some great photo ops.

Humayan’s Tomb is the first example of Mughal architecture in India, and later served as the inspiration for the Taj Mahal. You can totally see the resemblance, right?

So often I travel alone that it was fun to have someone to take pictures of. I think Maggie might have gotten a bit tired of it, but I’m glad to have these photos of her to look back on.

I love that we have this place to ourselves. Most tourist attraction in India are usually swarming with people, and Indians hang out hoping to get their picture taken with the foreigners. It was so nice to be able to walk around, take our time and just enjoy some site seeing, especially because as we were leaving, swarms of people were making their way in.

The tomb was commissioned by Humayan’s wife 9 years after he died, and once the tomb was built, other members of his family and people close to him were also buried here.

A lot of the architecture has a Persian influence. Goli didn’t come with us to the tomb, but she did comment at other places how it looked familiar to her from growing up in Iran.

We spent probably 2 hours wandering around here before meeting up with the rest of the group for breakfast and some shopping. By this point in the trip, Indian food for every meal was beginning to wear on us, so our Indian friends told us about a restaurant called the All American Diner where we could get, you guessed it, American food! I ordered bacon and eggs and it was quite possibly the best breakfast I’d ever had, at least in that moment. I almost never wanted it to end. We all really enjoyed the change in flavor palette.

After stuffing ourselves at breakfast, we flagged down a couple taxis to take us to Central Cottage Industries, a co-op owned by the government, where prices were set, but our driver told us the place was closed and took us somewhere else. As we went through everything in that shop and even bought a few things (I got a gorgeous yellow pashmina that might be the softest thing I’ve ever owned), Gypsa, a family friend of Nitish and Kamala found us and told us that the taxi driver had lied to us and the place we originally wanted to go was in fact open. She herded us into another cab and got us over there. Thank goodness for her or who knows how much money we would have overspent! I thought I took a few pictures of this part, but I can’t seem to find any, which is too bad because these places had nearly everything you could ever want to buy in India, and of course we went a bit crazy!

Maggie and I both love a movie called Today’s Special, about an Indian family in NYC that owns a restaurant and the free-living taxi cab driver who helps them save it. In that movie, the driver has a bowl that he uses to mix spices in. We looked all over India for a bowl like that, including the co-op and never found one. Have any of you seen that movie and know what I’m talking about (and if you haven’t, check it out! It’s on Netflix)? Does anyone know where I can get one? I’m still looking!