Delhi

And so on by train to Delhi, the final stop on this trip.

Our hotel is very historic, dating from the 1930s and in the Art Deco style. It has a wonderful collection of wall art - over 5,500 paintings, engravings, and photographs. And despite being in the city centre, it’s surrounded by nicely landscaped gardens. We were not expecting to see any Christmas decorations, but arrived to find the hotel dressed for the Christmas season!

On our first half day, Sunday, we took an Uber down to the India Gate and walked the Rajpath (now renamed) through Lutyens Delhi up towards the parliament building, government offices and presidential palace. It’s all on a very grand scale - about 3km in length and probably 250m wide. On a Sunday afternoon it was thronged with people enjoying a late afternoon stroll. The light was wrong for photographing the main complex and we couldn’t get right up to the presidential palace as parliament is sitting and there was tight security, but hopefully the second photograph below gives a sense at least of the scale and grandeur of Lutyens vision.

In the evening, we adjourned to one of the hotel’s bars, known as Patiala Peg - famous for its 120ml whisky measures and for being one of the locations Mountbatten met with Gandhi, Jinnah and Nehru to discuss Partition (presumably not including whisky-tasting).

On our second day, we had organised a driver and guide to allow us to visit the sites outside Old Delhi. It’s a vast city of 25 million people and this allowed us to get around with relative ease. First to Qutb Minar and the surrounding area, a sprawling Jain temple complex, repurposed as mosques and tombs by the first sultanate in the 1100s and the oldest Islamic site in Asia.

A detail from the Qutb Minar below. It stands at 72.5m tall - on the lowest level the columns are alternately rounded and pointed, as shown here. As you can see from the full height view immediately following, the second level is all rounded columns and the third level all pointed columns. It’s immense and very impressive.

After a wander around the Mehrauli Archaeological Park, onward to Humayun’s Tomb. Humayun was the second of the Mughal Emperors. His grand mausoleum, built on the instructions of his principal wife following his death, is at the centre of a vast garden which contains the tombs of over 100 family members and retainers.

Finally, a visit to a step well created in the 9th century to collect and access rain water.

Monday evening’s drinks were in the hotel’s Hardinge Bar, named after a Viceroy of the early 20th century. Another dark wood, atmospheric bar with more interesting pictures and a big medal collection to explore, including a Victoria Cross.

Today, Tuesday is the final day of our trip. We started off with a Metro ride up to the Old City - all very clean and efficient and much quicker than trying to do the same distance by road. We visited the Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in Asia, though it seems to hold that title simply because of the size of its courtyard which can hold over 20,000 people, rather than for the size of the mosque building itself.