Old Delhi

After having successfully done New Delhi, we turned our attention to Old Delhi. Really we should have done it in the other order so as to 'fully appreciate how far New Delhi has come' as the guide books say, but the Red Fort was closed on the Monday. So we got up to banana pancakes again and leisurely strolled through the market to get a rickshaw to the Red Fort.

The Red Fort, or Lal Qil'ah, is filled with Mughal and Colonial history (see link for full information and photographs). However to see it you have to beat back the hoards of guides, fan sellers, souvenir sellers and rickshaw drivers. The rickshaw drivers are the worst, as soon as you step off one at the red fort they come from all directions offering to take you to other places of interest. It's the ones who tell you the Red Fort is 'closed because of a Sikh festival' and offer to take you to other places that are open that are the real bottom-feeders, I feel sorry for tourists who fall into that trap. Word of warning, when travelling never trust anyone who tells you some tourist monument is closed, whether they are cab drivers or tourist police, always check the guide book or see for yourself first. Because of course the Red Fort was open, why would it be closed for a Sikh festival when it only contains Muslim Mosques?

As usual throughout Forts in India, the British used the Delhi one as a base. They built barracks in one of the gardens near the entrance that where pretty close architecturally to the rest of the fort, even if they did get the arches all wrong. Opposite the barracks is the best bit though: a large lawn with a stepped stone in the middle serving as the place where visiting dignitaries could dismount from their elephants. The fort didn't have many buildings, mainly just the imperial quarters, the ladies quarters, a bath house, a couple of mosques and the central court. The rest of the are as filled with gardens that would have been beautiful and cool when the steams and fountains that filled them were full, but unfortunately the Yamuna river that red them has receded a mile since the Fort was in full use, so that even the moat is now just another unofficial rubbish tip in Delhi.

After seeing all there is to see of the Red Fort, we wandered through the outskirts of Chandi Chowk (another market like Parah Ganj we stayed) to Jamam Masjid, the principle mosque in Delhi. Having done the main places of worship for Sikhs, Hindus and Christians, this was the last religious stop on our list. Of course it was also the only place that charged us to go in wit a camera (though it was in the bag and we didn't want to take any photos), and the only religious place we entered where the men still tried to hit on me. At the entrance they were trying to get a lonesome white male traveller to leave his nice new expensive shoes outside the mosque saying it was forbidden to carry them inside, though everyone else was, including us. Tut tut.

The building itself was beautiful, though you couldn't go inside. As usual we had to take our shoes off, but the floor was scorching hot which limited what wandering around the area we could do. We settled for just walking up to the mosque and back again. After sitting and looking for a little while (something you get very good at doing when its too hot to keep moving all the time) we braved the streets in an auto again back to the hotel for some air conditioning, omelet and french fries. The late afternoon was spent relaxing, before a last wander of Parah Ganj in the evening to look at the shops. We tired of that quickly however due to the hassle, and went up for an early night so we could get up and catch the train to Agra in the morning.

Hope all is good where you are! xx