Its Christmas time, the winter chill increases everyday and everyone is in a mood for holiday. This weekend our heritage walk was planned at Lodi Garden in the evening. The park was full of people enjoying their day off. We have been leading walks here regularly and an addition to the flora, fauna & historical buildings is the colourful dustbins. They have been painted by local artists, some have slogan, others use graffiti and cartoons & are most certainly an incentive for people to use them. (more…)

This heritage walk coincides with the Festival of Flower Sellers (Phoolwalon ki Sair) organised every year in Delhi. We shared stories of the festival, its history, its performance & visited sites in Mehrauli village where the festival was held. Two key sites in the Sair are Yogmaya Temple & dargah of Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki. The festival involves offering a chadar (sheet) of flowers at the dargah & pankha (fan) of flowers at the temple. (more…)

Mehrauli Village is one of the more unusual trudges in our list of heritage walks. It is a historic village, the first cities of Delhi came up here, & there is plenty of evidence of prehistoric settlements on the ridge area where Mehrauli area if one is careful enough to look.

Our walk this Sunday covered some of the medieval monuments which stand hidden among modern construction in Mehrauli. We meet at Adam Khan’s tomb which is the most prominent building here. (more…)

Remember ‘khoob ladi mardani woh to Jhansi wali rani thi’ or ‘do gaz zameen bhi na mili kue yaar mein’? Rani Laxmi Bhai of Jhansi, her companion Jhalkari Bai, Tantia Tope, Mangal Pandey & Bahadur Shah Zafar: these are people from Indian history we have most often read about, their poetry of defiance or of despair, were all part of the experience of 1857. (more…)

The neighbourhood of Kashmiri Gate is one of the unusual trudges in Delhi. Located near the ISBT, Railway station, a bulk market for car parts, a University Campus, it is extremely busy through the day & the heritage walk is best done on a Sunday morning, when the usual activity has not yet picked up pace. Kashmiri Gate was the area where many Europeans settled in the first half of 19^th century & later during the rebellion of 1857, many of its events were played out here. (more…)