Humayun's Tomb

Humayun was a Mughul emperor whose wife built him an amazing garden and an enormous building to house his remains.  She must have liked him.  We were sufficiently impressed by the time we got to the gateway to the tomb. 

The building itself is spectacular. 

But even after just a few hours in Delhi the most exciting part of the monument was the expanse of silent, empty greenery.

Humayun isn't the only chap buried here -- his royal barber also gets a pretty spectacular monument!

Slot Canyons

Four hours from Vegas, and five from Salt Lake City, adventures await. 

Say yes to everything: smoked jalepeno buffalo. 

Claustrophobia. 

A tight squeeze.

And exploring with old friends.

Dubai: Near the Top

We bought tickets to "At the Top," the observation deck of the world's tallest building, Burj Khalifa. It was originally named Burj Dubai, but was renamed after the ruler of Abu Dhabi after Abu Dhabi bailed out Dubai in 2010. (Names here are super confusing. Most streets, for example, are named after Sheikh Zayed in one way or another.)






















Here we are "At the Top."

Well, near the top. Here's what we could see below:



And here's what we could see above:

Before heading to the top, we prowled the nearby Dubai Mall, the world's largest mall. The mall went on for miles. There is an ice rink and an aquarium; we gawked at the latter in great awe for quite some time.



Honey is sold much like perfume - in beautiful glass vats, at almost $100 a pound.



There is an impressive array of designer clothes, including baby lines for some of the major brands. For example:



But most of the miles are full of cake. One of us spent a lot of time gazing at the cakes. There were layer cakes, and cupcakes of all kinds.

 A branch of Magnolia Bakery (though *this* Magnolia will screen print your cake with Disney princesses, which we're pretty sure is a no-go at its big sister in New York).



And the loveliest and most wonderful bookstore in the world. Well, in the UAE. Here Margaret is, in delight. For what did she find? The complete work of Dickens in three different editions per novel, and a full stack of secondary Literary Criticism. Not bad.

Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque

On Saturday, we went to the biggest mosque in Abu Dhabi - actually, it was planned as the world's biggest mosque, but there were objections - shouldn't the world's biggest mosque be in Mecca? So it is a very big mosque, but not the biggest.

It looked big enough.


Outside, there are pools and courtyards in dizzying plenty.

Despite its size, every individual piece is crazily elaborate - here is a column, with mother of pearl inlaid into marble.

And there are SO MANY columns! 

Inside, there are six chandeliers, shaped like upside-down date palms.

Here is the biggest of the chandeliers - five tons!

The carpet, we learned, was designed to look as if the chandelier were dripping its many colors onto the carpet, patch by patch. The carpet is handmade - it took two years to make in pieces, and was eventually stitched together inside the mosque!

There are acres and acres of carpet - with built-in rows, so that worshipers can arrange themselves into lines.

Most beautiful of all are the walls - embossed flowers on this one. You can't tell in this picture, but I am actually enjoying the flowers. I am not enjoying the outfit, which made me feel like a Goth Little Red Riding Hood.

 But the walls. The walls are amazing. Each piece of the wall was beautiful...

...fading into a beautiful ceiling, carved with verses from the Quaran, each bit different from the last.

Here is my favorite wall - intersecting circles, with a few patches made transparent, letting the light in.