The crowds at Chandni Chowk are an amazing sight, even on a Sunday morning when the market is officially closed. From Digambar Jain Lal Mandir (of the well known bird hospital) till Gurudwara Sisganj there were cars lined all along the road-of devotees to the Jain Mandir, Gauri Shankar temple, Central Baptist Church and Sisganj Gurdwara. Friends who visit the area are often surprised to find places of worship of all faiths so close to each other. But perhaps it is not such an unusual thing in the closely knit urban population as in our Purani Dilli. Continue Reading This Post

Photographs of heritage walk at Hauz Khas covering the monuments in Hauz Khas village & Deer Park. The monument is a madrasa built by Firuz Shah Tughluq & includes his own tomb. It is built on the edge of the Hauz I Alai, the tank created by Alauddin Khalji for his capital city of Siri. Firuz Shah renamed it Hauz Khas. Continue Reading This Post

No matter how experienced we are in leading heritage walks, talking to school students is always the most challenging! Perhaps as adults, we become set in the ways we think or can think. But for youngsters, nothing seems to be a taboo! We realized this yet again when we led a heritage walk to Red Fort for the students of Amity International School, Pushp Vihar, New Delhi. This was class seven and they all knew their history. The students divided themselves into 3 groups and each group named themselves after a Mughal emperors. So, we had Akbar, Babar and Shahjahan…the rulers whose family built the Red Fort and Shahjahanbad, being led by commoners of Delhi Heritage Walks: Awadhesh, Chhavi and Kanika! J

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The rebellion of 1857 is well known in Indian history. 1857 was the largest uprising anywhere against the British and Indians call it the first war of Independence, the Uprising or the simply the rebellion. For the other side, the British, it remains the Mutiny. After suppressing the rebellion, India was brought directly under the rule of the British Crown. Delhi was one of the biggest centers of the 1857 rebellion and our heritage walk in the northern ridge explores some of the sites where events of 1857 unfolded.

The first stop on our heritage trail is the Flagstaff tower. A look out space, it would have been one of the highest points on the ridge. This is where European men, women and children took shelter when they escaped the city of Shahjahanabad, away from the attacking rebels. They waited for help and when none came they moved further to Karnal. Now the area is surrounded by trees but photographs of 1858 show this land to be barren, with the Flagstaff tower standing lonely at this height. There was a photographer, Felice Beato who travelled around the country photographing the sites of the rebellion in the year 1858. His photos are a telling account of the situation then, and help us imagine it as we see those very sites today.

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A large part of our city’s monumental heritage is invisible…hidden behind massive malls, residential colonies. This is the first realization to strike anyone who begins exploring Mehrauli Archaeological Park. Our first thought is ‘we have driven past this road a hundred times, but never realized all this lay behind it!’ Our heritage walk in Mehrauli weaves its way through some of the most interesting monuments in Delhi. Mehrauli being the area where the first cities of Delhi came up: the Tomars, the Chauhans, the Turkish slaves had their capitals here; the Lal Kot, Qila Rai Pithora and the Qutb area. Even when the capital shifted this area continued to be settled. So today we find remains from different time periods in this region. Our first stop is a clearing which was created by archaeological work here, about a year ago. It revealed a stone floor, some foundations, rooms, graves. Continue Reading This Post