Day 6: Back in Delhi

When I woke up back in Delhi I felt more relaxed and determined to enjoy what was left of my tour and stop fixating on money.



I first visited an interesting Hindu temple with extensive gardens around it. I decided not to enter the temple at all so that people would leave me alone. The gardens were a fascinating area that was partially overgrown by bushes and vines, and partially immaculately groomed. There were scattered statues of all sorts of animals with cartoonish expressions on their faces, brightly painted. For example, there was a fountain made of four cobras, with a little white statue of Shiva standing on top. There were also mini-temples or tiny altars hidden throughout these gardens, littered with flowers and coins. The strangest thing I found was a machine next to one of the imposing stone statues of a god, with neon flickering lights flashing in circles on its face. This machine turned out to be like a little carnival machine where you put in 2 rupees and it tells you your weight. I remain baffled as to how this fits into a temple garden. Do Hindus have particular obsession with weight? I actually found 2 more of these machines tucked into corners of the garden. “Check your weight!” They said. Very odd.


Next I visited “Gandhi Smriti”, which is the house in which Gandhi lived for the last days of his life. There are several large statues of Gandhi around the gardens, draped in flowers. In fact, the entire property was dripping with flower chains. The rear garden had been basically made into a temple for Gandhi, featuring a little monument where he was killed, and a raised pathway of stone footprints representing the steps he took in his last 5 minutes on earth. I found this monument very moving, and stood around on the verge of tears for a while until I tore myself away to see more of the sights.


The major event of the afternoon was that I decided to spend some rupees on an Ayurvedic massage. The price was too high, and their brochure about how Ayurvedic massage could cure diabetes and Alzheimer’s definitely rubbed me the wrong way, but I decided to purchase the massage anyway because my back was sore from the hard Indian mattresses I’ve been frequenting, and I decided that this would be a good way to release some of my ‘alone vacation’ stress. In the spa office, I was brought back into a small room with a bed and a little gas stove with a pot on it in the corner and asked to undress. I have a great fear of being burned, so this terrified me. I nervously hovered around the room staring at the hot stove and feeling like a prude, and the massage therapist had to tell me three times, laughing “take off everything! Everything!” This massage was in fact, quite similar to the massage I received a few years ago in Uganda, except in slightly classier surroundings. The massage therapist put on a little flowered apron and started cooking up a small bucket of oil. I ended up getting covered in oil from the top of my head to each toe. Aside from wanting to yell “hey, stop cracking my toes! I’ll crack them myself if it ever becomes necessary!” I enjoyed the massage fully. There was also a strange interlude involving giving a hard tug on each one of my joints as if the therapist was trying to dislodge them, and I got a sound smacking from neck to feet with a bag full of Ayurvedic spices soaked in oil. Between the stove, apron, and being slathered in sweet-smelling oil, I felt like a cross between a lounging massage recipient and a slab of maple bacon.


After the massage, I felt much more ready to go on and face the rest of the day. What I should have done is skipped lunch and demanded to be taken to the Jain Bird Hospital, which I know I would have loved. It’s the only thing I regret not seeing on my Golden Triangle tour. I was dropped at Delhi Airport and started on my way to the next adventure, in Gujarat state on the northwest coast of India.