Jantar Mantar was a short walk across the street from our hotel. The area has several modern-looking structures that are actually ancient, used to measure time and astrological movements. I couldn’t understand what most of them were meant to measure, but they were impressive monuments to look at and sketch.
Qutb Complex was another excellent place to study pattern; it was everywhere. The complex is a big mix up of all the Jain and Hindu temples that were destroyed and used to build the columns. Qutb Minar, the tallest stone minaret in the world, is impressively tall and covered in pattern itself.
We went to Sacket Mall for lunch, where we had Burger King. There was no beef, but we did have chicken or mutton whoppers. After lunch, we walked around the mall and were surprised to see how western it was. It had many stores we are used to seeing here, such as Coach, Columbia, Gap, and others. We stopped in a bookstore and I bought a book about a couple who backpacked through India on Rs. 500 a day, called The Heat and Dust Project, as well as a poetry book by the Indian poet Feroze Varun Gandhi.
After the mall, we walked across the street to a poorer part of town, where we visited Kohj Studios and got to talk to many talented young artists in residence. It seemed like a great place to create artwork, and there remnants of a past exhibition around the area if you looked closely.
