Celebrates the establishment of the Republic of India on January 26th, 1950 when its new Constitution took effect.
The parade at New Delhi is, bar none, the most colorful military parade in the world.
Here’s the official site, and, as the Wikipedia entry is really pathetic, here is a tourist site with more information.
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So any word on whether the elephants are back? If I recall correctly, they weren’t there last year because they were “misbehaving”.
– Badtux the Elephant-lovin’ Penguin
I would assume they have returned, because I haven’t seen anything about a problem, and they are a major part of the pageant of the parade.
I almost made it in person twice, but aircraft took longer to fix than anticipated. I have seen pictures from Brits and Aussies that made it, and the color is far beyond what anyone else does. It spans centuries in uniforms and equipment. The movies and videos just can’t do it justice.
I suspect I shall never have any opportunity to see it in person, alas. I did ask around the office whether anybody had ever seen the parade. I got one affirmative answer, from a young lady who’d actually participated in the parade while in school — apparently they do the American kind of thing of having some college marching bands precede the main parade as sort of a warm-up to the main event. One of the benefits of that was that she and her fellow marchers got prime seats at the end of the route to watch the real parade.
I tried based on what other people said about it and then what I’ve seen since I started looking.
There were ‘political’ reasons I couldn’t just buy a ticket and go, but occasionally the opportunity would present itself. Being in the military made some travel easier, but other types impossible.
That would be a definite benefit, especially being at the front, given all of the various animals involved in the parade.