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September 22, 2007

Delhi Day 1: Old Delhi (Red Fort, Jama Masjid)

The first day it was out to "Old Delhi," but the more I saw of Delhi the less I was really able to understand why this was old and another part "new". We used our feet and the cycle and auto-rickshaws (three wheeled crazy-driving vehicles which obey their own laws of traffic physics).

Lal Qila / The Red Fort

Delhi_Lal Qila_ IMG_0134
You can get the wiki history here. In short: "The Red Fort was the palace for Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan's new capital, Shahjahanabad, the seventh Muslim city in the Delhi site. He moved his capital from Agra in a move designed to bring prestige to his reign, and to provide ample opportunity to apply his ambitious building schemes and interests."

It was huuuuge, with a throne room on site. It had not been maintained particularly well, but it was an impressive fort (to be outshone on the trip by others later).

Jama Masjid

(Photos coming soon from A., Wikipedia entry). JM is the primary mosque in Delhi. It has a huge courtyard and a marble covered area, as well as minarets, one of which you can climb up. You can't wear shoes in any mosque, so you have to carry them or leave them at the door. We left them at the door, but then I ran back as my Jamaica-senses were telling me that an afternoon rain was going to fall, and we didn't want wet shoes. We waited out the shower in the cool marble area, watching kids play in the flooded courtyard, and then climbed the steep steep stairs to the minaret (wet, slippery, unlit, crowded, and barefoot). The view at the top was good, but packed with others.

Chandi Chowk

A big market-y area we walked through between the fort and the mosque, some photos of "houses" here. We had lunch at an Indian fast-foodish place, and dinner at Karim's, a dive by the south gate of Jama Masjid, which had some of the best food he had in all out trip. chandi_chowk_IMG_0160

We were hoping to go back to the Fort for their sound and light show, but the jetlag got the best of us and we ended up calling it a (relatively) early day.

Posted by griffjon at September 22, 2007 07:23 PM

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