And on the Sixth Day... (pt. 2)

Well Didsbury Mosque has been in the news this week. Did I tell you I used to live opposite Didsbury Mosque? Guess I wouldn't have mentioned it, no real reason to. It was before they had open days, so I never visited. Barely noticed it was there, apart from Fridays when the street was full of cars. The mosque was doing its Burton Road thing and I was doing mine.

Manchester is ace. I wasn't going to write anything for fear of seeming a grief jumper but I sort of couldn't not.

Once upon a time, I was travelling down the Oxford Road when the whole bus - both decks - spontaneously broke into Maggie May. That's the Manchester I remember, so seeing St Anne's Square spontaneously Oasisise, that made me feel warm and fuzzy. You can add to that the homeless heroes, the Sun boycott, Dan Hett's joke and the general cross-community pulling together that's being reported. It makes this grumpy, old cynic remember the wide-eyed twenty something that desperately wanted to be a part of that city.

Anyway...

Since I've been in Delhi, the Number 1 sight to see (according to Trip Advisor) has been Gurudwara Bangla Sahib. I found this odd as I hadn't heard of it - it doesn't have the international cache of a Red Fort or an India Gate. But then neither does Akshardham and Akshardham is brilliant with its garish, OTT, Disney vibe. Maybe noone has heard of it because the name is too long and my simple English speaking ears just can't comprehend all those syllables.

It was alright. If you stumbled across it you'd think it was ace with its golden ceiling and its domes and its cormorant doing its business in the holy water that people were drinking (some religious idiosyncrasies are weird, aren't they?). It would probably make my Delhi Top 20 but Number 1 is a whole heap more hype than it should have.

Whilst we're talking about religious places with overlong names, I also visited Hazrat Nizam-ud-din Dargah. That would probably feature higher up my recommendation list, although admittedly more for the uncomfortable, juxtaposed weird than the end spectacle. You go into a really local market, then walk barefoot through an intimidating, winding tunnel of beggars before it opens out into the flower-scented religious complex.