History and treasures galore at my favourite museum (The National Museum, New Delhi, India)

Member Name: koshkha

Product:	The National Museum, New Delhi, India
Date:	12/09/06 (642 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fantastic exhibits, great audio tour, managable size

Disadvantages: A little off the normal tourist trail, expensive by Indian standards

National Treasure

Where is it?
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The National Museum is on Janpath, the main street running south from Connaught Place, the ‘hub’ of New Delhi. It's down at the 'quiet end' of this famous street, just past the intersection with Rajpath and a block and a bit from the India Gate.

For some reason that’s a mystery to me, the museum doesn't seem to attract the attention that I believe it deserves. I've had several city tours with various holidays in Delhi but nobody has ever included the National Museum, or for that matter, even mentioned its existence. Consequently, I always feel a little bit like I discovered it for myself although it is - of course - in all the guide books.

Getting there
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If you are going to take a taxi or a ‘tuk-tuk’ (auto rickshaw) to the museum, be aware that it's not a busy area and relatively little traffic passes the museum. You may want to get a driver to wait for you or ask him to come back later to pick you up at an agreed time. Most will be more than happy to come back for the promise of a second journey and will want you to pay them later.

Alternatively, if the weather's not too hot, you could take a stroll round to the India Gate where you'll find scores of tuk-tuks to drive you to your next destination.

Character
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It's a very accessible mid-size museum with a broad-ranging collection of Indian art, sculpture and artefacts. I liked it so much the first time I visited that I booked an extra day's holiday just to make sure I could go back again and drag my husband along. It's not a really big museum like the Louvre or the British Museum - you don't need days to see everything - and in fact, if anything, it's surprisingly that such a great nation has such a relatively modest national collection. I have a sneaky suspicion that we (the British) probably pinched a lot of what was worth having before we left India but that may just be me getting paranoid.

Origins of the Collection
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The core of the collection was actually originally put together for an exhibition in the UK at Burlington House in London in 1947-48. Students of Indian history will recognise the significance of 1947 as the year of independence and partition. After the exhibition, the materials were returned to India and put on display at the Durbar Hall (a Durbar is a really big meeting or celebration) in Rashtrapati Bhawan for a decade or so until the National Museum was specially built to hold them and was opened in 1960. The Rashtrapati Bhawan is now the Presidential Palace and is just up the road from the Museum.

What’s in the Collection?
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As I've said, it's not the biggest museum, but what's there is well worth seeing. It traces Indian history from all the way back in the third millenium BC through to quite modern times. My Delhi guide book suggests you need a day to see it all but you'd have to be exceptionally interested in absolutely everything - and all the exhibits would have to be open - for that to be the case. I have a more than healthy interest in all things Indian (actually, it's bordering on obsessive) and it's still only taken me two hours each time I've been.

Want to feel like a Celebrity?
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One weird thing to report. I mentioned already that it's not really an established stop on the tourist trail. People may well stop and want to ask you where you are from, whether you are having a nice time, and sometimes kids will ask you for your autograph. We've also had this in other museums - groups of school kids asking if you'll pose with them for photos. It's strange but rather charming. In the southern Indian city of Chennai, we met dozens of school groups who had travelled for days to visit the city, arriving from isolated parts of India that rarely see tourists. We were followed around by hundreds of kids who’d never met Europeans before.

Opening Hours
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Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm. Closed on Mondays
I recommend going at the weekend to avoid the school parties - but if you can't do that, then I just recommend that you go anyway. It's a little treasure trove.

Some practicalities
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Bags of any significant size - e.g. day packs, holdalls etc - are not permitted in the museum. There's a free bag deposit office round the side of the building on the right hand side as you enter through the gate and pass the temple wagon. Your bag will be put into an individual 'locker' and you get the key - don't fret; it's going to be safe. At this stage it's also worth knowing that if you want to take your camera into the museum you will be stung for an extra 300 Rp (approx £3.50) on top of the entrance fee so if you don't want to pay the camera fee, leave your camera with your bags.

As you enter the museum your handbag, wallet etc have to go through an airport type x-ray machine. Gentlemen will be frisked in the open; ladies go into a little booth for a quick rub down with a lady guard. Don't forget to pick up your bags.

The ticket counter is directly ahead. At this point, if you are new to India, you are about to discover one of the inequalities for tourists travelling in the country. The entrance fee for locals is 10 Rp (about 12p) but tourists pay 300 Rp (approx. £3.50). Some people get ratty about this - and the camera fees - but realistically we have so much more money than the average Indian visitor that I can't see a big problem with subsidising museums and monuments. However, just to put things in perspective, 300 Rp would buy a good lunch for two people in a tourist restaurant.

The good news is that the museum curators have worked out that the average tourist walking in off the street probably knows very little about Indian history and wouldn't have a clue what they are looking at so the 300 Rp entrance fee includes a rather good audio tour. To get your headphones and player you will have to leave a deposit - such as your passport, driver's license or a credit card. You only need one deposit to secure the headsets for a group. If you are of a nervous disposition, you might want to think about taking something like your Tesco club card as an alternative but to be fair, you have nothing to worry about; your cards won't go walkies. However, now you've got rid of your bags, paid for your ticket and got your headset, it's time for YOU to go walkies.

The Layout
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The museum is laid out on three floors with a small circular garden in the middle. The exhibition rooms lie off a circular corridor. You start on the ground floor with the oldest exhibits and work your way round and then up the stairs. Temporary exhibitions tend to be on the upper floors. The layout isn't entirely logical and it's easy to miss some rooms if you aren't paying attention. When rooms are undergoing renovation (and it seems like renovating the museum is a bit like painting the Forth Bridge) the access can be confused so it's worth keeping an eye on the floor plan that you'll receive with your ticket. When we visited in June the ground floor was about 80-90% open whilst the first and second floors had more areas that were closed.

Some of the renovated rooms are air-conditioned whilst many of the older rooms are relying on noisy fans for patchy cooling. Whilst this wouldn't be an issue in the winter time, it does make the museum sticky in the height of summer. You may want to take a fan with you - I know it sounds daft but getting hot and bothered could get in the way of your enjoyment of the museum.

There are toilets on each floor. There's a gift shop on the first floor which has a few interesting books and odds and ends of gifts but nothing that's really strongly linked to the exhibitions. There's another 'publications' store on the ground floor behind the ticket window which sells academic pamphlets about the collection as well as some absolutely dreadful plaster cast facsimiles of articles in the collection. There's a vegetarian cafeteria on the top floor.

The Audio Tour
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The easiest way to avoid missing anything is to try to follow the audio tour circuit - if you find all the numbers then you won't miss anything important. The audio tour does a good job of picking out some of the most important pieces in the collection but there will be times when you'll question why some of the items are included. You can skip anything you aren't interested in - just pick the numbers of the items that you want to know about.

The tour starts in the central corridor in front of the statue of Vishnu and then leads into the pre-history section. There are 55 stops on the tour but not all of them will be in the open galleries. Good news about the commentary - the narrator doesn't go on for too long about anything.

The Ground Floor
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The tour starts with my favourite section - the one on Harappan Civilisation. Now I'm not generally very interested in really old stuff and have seen so many flint axes and oil lamps in my time that they leave me cold. However, the Harappan exhibition got me very fired up. In part this was because I knew nothing about the Indus Valley cultures despite them existing for longer than the Roman, Egyptian or Ancient Greek civilisations. The first cities excavated back in the 1920s were Harappa and Mohenjodaro and I just don't know why these cities aren't more famous. Actually, I'll take a crack at an explanation - much of the area covered by the Indus Valley cities now lies in Pakistan which falls a little short of most people's ideal holiday destinations.

Anyway, back to how amazingly clever these folk were. The civilisation dates back to earlier than 2700 BC and was very sophisticated. They cast exquisite bronze figurines - the most famous is a tiny dainty dancing girl - carved detailed human busts, made lots of cute little animal figurines that must have been for decorative purposes, threw pots on a wheel, made toys and statues of ladies kneading bread and doing their chores. They also had a sophisticated system of weights and measures that were standardised across a wide geographic area. That sort of stuff just fries my brain. They also have a skeleton in a shallow grave complete with beautiful pots to help her into the next world.

After you leave the Harappan gallery you enter a series of galleries with sculptures made from stone and bronze covering the Mauryan period (3rd Century BC), the Sunga Period (2nd Century BC), the Gandhara period, the Gupta period (4th - 6th C AD), on through medieval carvings and so on. The ages don't mean a lot to me but I love the figures and can appreciate them without necessarily understanding them.

Also on the ground floor are examples of late medieval art, Buddhist art (including the relics of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha), a fabulous collection of Indian miniature paintings, and a couple of rooms of general decorative arts including a stunning ivory scale model of a palace. There's a bizarre collection of transparencies on the evolution of Indian scripts and coins that holds no appeal to me whatsoever and finally some fantastic jewellery

The First Floor
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The galleries on the first floor include special temporary exhibition space, lots of manuscripts, two rooms of central Asian antiquities, Coins, more paintings, a section on Maritime heritage and quite a lot of office space.

The Second Floor
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The highlight on the second floor is the renovated section on arms and armour. Being a girlie I'm not big on the whole 'dressing up to go out and kill people' vibe but I do enjoy the costumes, especially for the horses and elephants.
This floor also has galleries of decorative art and textiles, some tribal costumes from the north eastern parts of India and some interesting musical instruments.

If you've got this far without flagging, it's probably time for a cup of tea in the cafeteria.

Special Exhibitions
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These can be quite variable in quality and interest. When I visited in November 2005 there was a splendid exhibition on the textile trade between India and Europe - full of great old chintzes and exploring the influence of Indian fabrics on European fashions. In June 2006 the 'special' was an exhibition called 'in the Footsteps of the Buddha’. It consisted of photographs, very few actual exhibition pieces and worth a five minute look at most.

Disabled Access
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In theory there is disabled access but I'm not sure where the special entrance is. The main entrance has a lot of steps plus the security gate to get through and I'd doubt they'd be easy to manage in a wheelchair. If you need help, I'd suggest you ask the guys at the baggage store and I'm sure they'll point you in the right direction.

Summary
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By Indian terms it's a bit pricey but I really do recommend this nice little museum as well worth a look and I hope that if you get the chance you'll go and explore for a couple of hours - you could be very surprised by some of the treasures inside.

Summary: If you have a few hours to spare, I can't recommend a visit highly enough