Our last day in India began with chapel and Grace gave a lovely and moving recap of our experience here. Then we went to the Lotus Temple, the Baha'i Temple in Delhi. It's made in the shape of a lotus flower and is really quite an amazing example of construction. It was built essentially by hand, which is how Indian construction works and is all the more amazing considering that it is made almost entirely of concrete.
The Lotus Temple
Then we went to lunch at this place called Pindi, which I had been to before on my trip to India in 2007. At that time my driver took me there and this time our driver took us there. Almost the entire clientele was tourists, so I think the restaurant must give a pretty good kickback to the drivers. The food was not that great, but Jimmy got a picture with a snake charmer and his cobra later for Rs. 500!
Our next and final stop was Birla House, the place where Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated. It was very interesting and very well done. We saw the place where Gandhi spent the last 144 days of his life and they have even poured concrete footsteps to show the path he took to the place where he was assassinated. There is a commemorative column on the place where he actually fell. It's almost overwhelming the amount of information that they have about Gandhi and Indian history. I took pictures of all the signs with information because I couldn't read everything. I figure I'll read it when I get home.
Gandhi's final walk
The place where Gandhi fell
Next it was time to go back to the Bhawan and get ready to leave. We thought we were going to have to pay for our stay there, but as it turns out, they were putting us up for free. That was a great surprise! We got in the car after much effort getting all of our bags in and set out for the airport. On the way we met Santosh and his wife so we could return to them the sim cards for our phones – they were taken out in his wife's name and the names of some of his staff members, so it was important to get them back.
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