Delhi, India

Feeling refreshed from our time in Thailand, we arrived in Delhi, the capital of India, and began our private tour of India which would cover the area known as the “Golden Triangle” of northern India (Delhi, Agra and Jaipur).  We were again on a GAP Adventures tour, but this time we were not part of a larger group. For the next several days we would have a driver and a local tour guide taking us through the major sites on our tour.  Travelling in India without a driver is still very complex as the country has not yet built the necessary infrastructure to allow for simple transportation.  Even so, this tour was very cheap on an absolute scale.

We started our tour the next morning in Delhi at the Jama Mosque.  This is the principal mosque of Old Delhi in India. Commissioned by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal, and completed in the year 1628 AD, it is the largest and best-known mosque in India.

Note our “shoes” as we had to remove them before entering and instead of walking on the hot, dirty street, our tour supplied us with slippers.  Kate was also given a fabric to wrap around herself.   It’s common in India to be required to remove your shoes before entering mosques, memorials or other monuments.

The mosque lies at the origin of a very busy central street of Old Delhi, the Chawri Bazar Road.  We took a tour through this market on a rickshaw, but kept the tour short as the temperature was extremely hot and even sitting in the back of the rickshaw got to be uncomfortably warm.  The streets were small, crowded and busy.  Take note of the electrical wiring, much of which was attached to leaky drainage piping.

India has yet to institute basic traffic laws and regulations even as their roadways have become some of the busiest and most congested in the world.  Pedestrians mix with bikers, rickshaws, ox-carts (pulled by actual oxen), motorcycles, motorized rickshaws, cars, trucks, buses, camels, and the occasional elephant.  For the most part we were unable to document the insanity and chaos that composed the streets of India, but our rickshaw trip through the market gave us the opportunity to capture, at a slower speed, what some of the small streets of Delhi look like.

Our next stop was the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial.  Gandhi, of course, was the great Indian citizen who is well-known worldwide for his use of non-violent resistance to achieve India’s independence from Great Britain.  The Indian people revere him as the father of their country, much as Americans think of George Washington.  The memorial (not a tomb since followers of Hindi cremate the deceased), is one of the most serene and peaceful places we had yet visited.

After the memorial, we made a quick stop by some other monuments. The India Gate is the national monument of India. Originally known as All India War Memorial, it is a prominent landmark in Delhi and commemorates the 90,000 soldiers of the British Indian Army who lost their lives while fighting for the British Indian Empire in World War I.  Following India's independence, India Gate became the site of the Indian Army's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, known as the Amar Jawan Jyoti (The flame of the immortal soldier).

Originally, a Statue of King George V had stood under the now-vacant canopy in front of the India Gate, and was removed to Coronation Park with other statues.

Nearby, we stopped at the seat of the Indian government.  On the left are the houses parliament and on the right are the buildings that house the Indian military leadership.

Behind (or in front depending on where you’re standing) and between these two groups of buildings is the house of the Indian President, similar to the White House in the United States.

Our next stop was a site known as Humayun’s Tomb. 

This huge mausoleum was built for Emperor Humayun, who ruled India from 1565 – 1572 AD, by his wife, Hamida Banu Begum after his death.  It serves as the precursor to the Taj Mahal as it represents the earliest example of Persian influence in Indian architecture. 

The building stands on a platform of 12,000 square meters and reaches a height of 47 meters.  The building has over 100 graves enclosed, earning it the name: “Dormitory of the Mughals” (the Muslim rulers of India). 

It is the first building in India to use red sandstone and white marble in massive quantities.

The gate leading into the tomb

In the courtyard and garden of the tomb.

On the terrace of the building looking out over the garden and the entrance to the garden

Looking out over the garden

Inside the building look at a window

The tomb of Humayun

The base of the building

Finally we finished our day at the Qutb Complex which was the center of the ancient city of Delhi and houses some of the oldest and most massive ancient structures in Delhi.  Many of the buildings were originally built as part of a Hindu temple, but the complex was converted over the centuries into a mosque and eventually fell into ruin.

On this site, the Qutb Minar stands as the world's tallest brick minaret with a height of 72.5 meters.

Just across from the Qutb Minar is the base of what was intended to be an even larger minaret, but construction was so expensive, that work was never advanced beyond a basic stage.

The base and buildings around the Qutb Minar:

The iron pillar of Delhi, India, is a 7 meter high pillar, notable for the composition of the metals used in its construction.

The pillar, which weighs more than six tons, is said to have been fashioned at the time of Chandragupta Vikramaditya (375 – 413 AD). The pillar initially stood in the centre of a Jain temple complex housing twenty-seven temples that were destroyed, and their material was used in building the Qutb Minar. The pillar and ruins of the temple stand all around the Qutb complex today. The pillar is 98% pure wrought iron, and is a testament to the skill of ancient Indian blacksmiths. It has attracted the attention of both archaeologists and metallurgists, as it has withstood corrosion for over 1,600 years in the open air.

This building is the College and Tomb of Alauddin Khalji built between 1296 and 1316 to teach “traditional instructions”. 

The Tomb of Iltutmish who reigned in India from 1211 – 1236, is a particularly intricate structure in this complex and is a landmark of Indo-Islamic architecture. 

It was a full first day in Delhi but our driver and guide made it one of the easier touring days we’d done in a while.