Breakfast…
Breakfast at the Blue Triangle family hostel YWCA, consits of porridge, bread, egg omlette (which is egg done in a frypan), a ball that was spicy (apologises for not knowing the correct name), and tea. All of which was very filling, as a result meant that weren’t hungry until around 2pm.

Walking in Delhi…
We weren’t being met until 10:30am so we decided to go for a short walk from where we were staying. The streets are wide with large trees, and the roads are two lanes on each side (not that this makes much difference) . There are also pedestrian crossings, however you do take your own life in your hands when crossing the road. It is a case of look right and get to the centre before going any further. Thankfully we crossed when others were crossing, which made it a bit easier.

Visit to the Parliamentary Library…
A holiday is not complete without a visit to a Library. On this occassion we arranged to visit the Parliamentary Library. However, to even get beyond the entrance gate we had to get offical permission (thank-you Vini!) which consisted of paperwork & a letter outlining who we were, country, and why we wanted to visit.

Before were were allowed in, we sat in in a small building just near the entrance gate for about 20 minutes or so, while they chassed up the person who Vini had arranged the tour with (apparently he was not present – but had thankfully left the information with someone else!). After going through a second security gate and being patted down, we were finally in the building. The day that we were visiting was also the opening of India parliament, and the President was there for the official opening. After walking through a number of halls we got to the Library.

The Library was an amazingly light filled space – which covered a number of floors. The parliamentary Librarian showed us round for approximately 50 miutes. We went from floor to floor, and saw the MP’s reading room, special collections of the first PM and the collected works of Gandi, and storage areas. The items in the collection are for use by MP’s and their staff, although the staff use the library to get the information that the MP’s require. A few 100 people work at the rary in a variety of levels. They do have a library catclogue – but only for items after 1991. Everything else is on card catalogues. I would of loved to have taken photos – but alas cameras are not allowed in the building. We even saw the parliamentary debates from Australia – they have a recipricol arrangement with Canberra – we’ll send you ours if you send us yours.

While we were visiting the stacks the staff were celebrating the installation of a new computer and were eating sweets – we were also given a piece. However they only have two computers down there – we are very lucky! It was a great tour 🙂