Persian Pistachios and FabIndia

These pictures are all from the Qutub Minar, the tallest minarete in the world, I believe. On the left is the whole Qutub, to the right of that photo is some detail from the Minaret. Behind the Qutub is the Quwwat Al-Islam Mosque, which is what the the other pictures are from. It was the first Mosque built in Delhi after the Islams conquered India. Did you know that Delhi has the second most monuments of any city in the world?






But to back it up a little bit: On my way to India, I had an eleven hour layover in Heathrow, the international airport in London. Originally, I had wanted to try to venture out into London, however my family *cough* my parents persuaded me to stay in the airport. Admittedly, I wasn't feeling too adventurous when I did finally reach London, I just wanted to find a nice bench to sleep on. Thankfully my luggage had been checked all the way to Delhi, so I only had my backpack and laptop to worry about. Heathrow is a very nice airport if you are not going to be there for eleven hours and you are not trying to find a place to sleep. I ended up moving from lounge to lounge (there was no secluded benched area like in Singapore last summer) and sleeping for maybe 30 minutes at a time in each one...it wasn't fun.

At one of the last lounges, about three hours before my plane came in, I sat down to sleep and shortly afterwards was joined by an older man who looked to be around sixty or seventy, and appeared to be Middle Eastern. After he sat down, he started shuffling through some papers in his briefcase, and as he was looking through them accidentally dropped a whole sheaf of them. I bent down to pick them up for him because his hands were full, and he thanked me profusely. Five minutes later, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a Ziploc bag of pistachios, which to my surprise, he offered to share with me! He said that they were excellent Persian pistachios from Tehran. I tried some, and they were as good as he said. They were spicier than the kind that's normally sold in the states, and they were also lighter in colour. Anyways, so we shared the pistachios for awhile, and then when his plane came he offered me to take more because he said he was going to Tehran and would be able to get much more there. Those pistachios were the best thing I ate in Heathrow the whole day. If I were to judge English cuisine from their airport food, my report would not be favourable, haha.

Now on to the rest of my sights in India: This is Humayun's Tomb, the precurser to the Taj Mahal. Can you see the similarities? Our guide for this day was an amazing professor who knew more than I could ever hope to learn in four lifetimes. She told us everything from the significance of the trees on the grounds around this tomb to the bricks that are on the walkways leading up to it. This picture is us climbing up the staircase into the tomb. These stairs were not half as steep as the ones I had to climb to get up Angkor Wat, haha.

There is no way to convey the grandeur of of these tombs, even with pictures. It's just one of those things you have to see for yourself. The following pictures are more details from the tomb, although what looks like a marble coffin is not in fact where Humayun was buried: his remains are in the ground. You can look down this open grate in the floor to see where he was actually buried. I forget why the Mughal's buried their dead in the ground now; google it if you want to know, haha. Anyways. So I think I'm done with pictures for the day, uploading them takes FOREVER. The Taj Mahal and FabIndia will have to come sometime later....stay tuned!! ; )

Anna