Final Look at Delhi

I missed Jama Masjid the first time I was in Delhi. It was supposed to be quite easy to find from the Old Delhi Railway Station, but I had managed to walk right on by. I wanted to set that right. So I set off down the road to see what I could see. I thought I could see a minaret in the distance, so I headed in that direction. But Delhi is not an easy city to navigate in. It is possible to see things in the distance from things like bridges, but as soon as you get to ground level you become engulfed by buildings that close off the view. In addition, for a city of this size there are just not that many intersecting streets of size. They are few and far between. To get to a spot where you think you might have seen something, you have to cut into small and winding streets in neighbourhoods. And for me that quickly gets me turned around so that I don't exactly know what direction I was originally headed.

Rather than try to keep myself headed in the right direction in the rabbit warren of the neighbourhoods, I decided to keep following the main road I was on. I was aided by the fact that the road couldn't get past where I wanted to be because it headed more or less into a “V” where two sets of train tracks met. I kept on and eventually ran into the road called Chandni Chowk, which is a main bazaar area in Old Delhi. That helped. I set off down that road and found myself following a parade of some sort. There were a lot of students in the parade and they were doing various sorts of things. Some were doing some martial arts with sticks. Others were doing acrobatics of various sorts and with different accessories. It was rather interesting. I dawdled along with them as they would stop at various intervals and do things.

At length I discovered where they were headed. Out in front of the Old Delhi Railway Station there was a platform with people who appeared to be community leaders. Each group in the parade would trundle up and perform for them and then move off. It all appeared to be in honour of an Islamic festival to take place in the next few days.

But there were a lot of people there as well, and people in crowds just aren't very courteous. After a while I got tired of being jostled and bumped and pushed. It was time to go. I headed off down the street and found I had been in the same area the first time I had tried to find the mosque. This time I headed down a different street. I realized the mistake I had made the last time. I had followed the outer wall of the Red Fort. This went in a different direction than the one that headed towards the Jama Masjid. By the time I reached the end of the wall, I was past the mosque and couldn't find it. This time with my earlier turn, I came right up on it. Perfect!

Alas! This was as close as I got to it. As I headed up towards the mosque and prepared to enter by taking off my shoes, one official tsk-tsked me and told me I couldn't go in. It was Muslims only time as it was a prayer time. He was none too pleasant about it, but I simply started to put my shoes back on and wait. And then...

Another guy came up and put it like this: “You go outside! You can't go in until 1:30 when the Muslims are finished.” This put my back up. I was so annoyed at his tone of voice and the rude way he did it. So I said, “please.” He refused. So I told him he was rude and that I wouldn't be back. I did it loudly as well, and I even mocked him telling me to go. Possibly not the most polite thing I could have done myself, but I was quite annoyed. I was tempted to point out to him that they were now going to not get the money from me that they would have if I had been prepared to enter the mosque and pay their “photography” fee, even though the mosque was technically free to enter. But I didn't. I just left.

This left me with a decision on what to do with myself and what I might do with the money I had saved. I still had to remember that I was going to be cutting it close as to whether I would run out of money before getting to the airport the next day or not. But I still had a bit of room to play with.

I walked down the road and happened on yet another archaeological site that was not mentioned in anything I had read so far about Delhi. This was one of the original 7 citadels that had been built long ago by the old Muslim rulers. This was the citadel that is now called Kotla Firoz Shah. I had to look at it carefully, because it looked a bit small at first. I didn't want to spend a bunch of my remaining funds on something that wasn't going to be worth the time. But it was actually quite large when I looked it over from the outside. So I bought a ticket and went inside.

Once inside I started looking around. The citadel was built by a ruler named Firuz Shah Tughlaq. It was built sometime between 1351 and 1388 and had been built along the banks of the Yamuna River. The river has long since changed its course or level and now run some distance away from the old citadel. But there is an expressway running along the side of the citadel, presumably where the river used to be, so it's almost the same. Well maybe not.

For being 700 years old and having had all sorts of different rulers running around conquering the country and the city in particular, it's in remarkably good shape. It also helps that they are making efforts to restore the citadel, perhaps in preparation for inclusion on the World Heritage List. At the entrance sat the old palace, or what's left of it.

Then I tried to walk around behind it where there was a bunch of other ruins. Two of the custodian/guards of the site were walking around the grounds. They approached me and seemed to be suggesting that I couldn't go that way. They wanted me to follow them around to other, and it seemed to me they were suggesting more interesting, areas. And they also seemed to want to show me around. I smelled a request for money on the heels of being shown around, so I merely took their advice (for the moment) about not going through the arch to the unknown beyond, and headed back around the ruined palace. There I dawdled, taking some photos and poking around, while they tried to get me to go after them. They eventually gave up and moved off on their rounds.

And I found that there were people in the area they didn't want me to go. I went in there and had a look around. It was a park area with people having picnics and such.

Next I headed out and around where the custodians were trying to herd me. I found a pyramidal structure with a pillar on top. It was a pillar of Ashoka (or maybe Asoka). I had been seeing this name around India, and I'm still not sure what Asoka is, but I did find out at this citadel that there are only two of these pillars. And one of them was at this citadel. It had been moved carefully from its original location and placed on this structure. It was first placed on the first level. Then, once the second level was built it was raised, and then again after the third and final level was completed.

Although I'm not completely sure it was allowed to climb up to the top, there were a number of people who had done so. However, all the entrances were barred up, with only a hole in one of the sets of bars giving access. So I think it was illicit entry. I still went up. Hey, what's good for some should be good for all, I say. At the top the view was really very nice.

Next to the pyramidal structure was the mosque. The walls had fallen down at some point, but it was still a functioning space and I noticed a number of people doing some kind of prayers before the wall facing to Mecca.

After that little corner had been investigated I headed into the lawn area where there was a large well. This is where I bumped into the two guards/caretakers again. The well had been fenced off with gates, that were closed, at the entrances. But the guards beckoned me forward and opened it up and then invited me in. My heart sank a bit because I was sure this was going to cost me. And I was really getting short on money if I was going to make it to the next day without having to go to a bank again. But they were also so insistent that I couldn't quite figure out a good way to refuse. So I went in. One of them explained to me the reason why it was fenced off. The well is quite deep, 50 meters or something like that. There are no fences keeping people from the edge of the well, and I was told that 3 children had fallen in at some point and drowned in the well. I could understand why it was off-limits. And yet it was also really interesting inside. I liked looking around at the structure of this enormous well.

After they showed it to me, we left. I started walking towards the entrance, fully intending to not make a big deal of anything. And I was also going to pretend that I had no idea of what might be expected of me, in terms of a monetary thank for being allowed into the well. They never said anything either, and I don't know if it was because they were embarrassed to have to make it clear, whether it was the other couple who wandered into the well after us, who were Indian, and who didn't offer any monetary thank you, or whether they were just being friendly and I had once again been overly suspicious. In any case, I left the citadel without having to pay anything else for the experience. And it made up for the rude treatment at the Jama Masjid mosque. It put a nice little cap on my last day in Delhi and left a good impression of India to leave the country with.

So I went and had my last big meal in India, or Indian food and went back to my hotel to prepare for my flight to Egypt the next day.