Horseback Riding Vacation in India (Day 2)
Day 2 – In the morning, after a delicious breakfast with many dishes available including fresh juices and fruits as well as omelets cooked to order, we had a tour of some of the highlights of Old and New Delhi seeing the magnificent sandstone government buildings, built almost a century ago and the 14th century Jamaat-Khana Mosque. The afternoon was given over to visiting the impressive Mausoleum to Humayun (1565), a precursor to the exquisite Taj Mahal, and then on to a carpet store with a huge choice of different items where they gave us detailed explanations of how they were made and the significance of the designs which are often tribal in origin and go back thousands of years. Few of our group left there without having at least one rug shipped home. That evening we made our way to the railway station to board the overnight train for Bikaner, an ancient town on an oasis in the Thar Desert, which is an overnight trip to the southwest near the border with Pakistan. With the help of nearly a dozen turbaned porters we made our way through crowds at the station to our sleeping compartments where we had a picnic dinner as the train rumbled southwest into the night. The seats folded out and we had comfortable beds so that most of us slept well through the night until we arrived at Bikaner.