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Published: April 26th 2006
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The Red Fort
Like seeing Buckingham Palace at the end of Oxford Street... I've never found a city that is quite as nonchalant about the history that surrounds it. It makes for stunning contrasts. Right next to the most hectic market - or, to be accurate, series of markets, one bleeding into the other - is a huge, six hundred year old fort that is big enough to be called a town in less laid-back countries.
In fact, for a country as in-your-face as India, it has a damn good line in understatement - "Hill Station": three hours drive up a mountain road. That's just not a hill. Similarly, to me, a fort is a military building that's bigger than a bunker, but not quite ready to be a castle. In Delhi, it's somewhere with 30 foot high walls, big enough to fit not one but four palaces, barracks, a market, fountains, gardens and, probably, a safari park tucked away behind the cupboard where they store the garden furniture. That's not a fort. That's a city with ramparts. 30 foot high, six foot deep ramparts.
Whatever they call it, the Red Fort is truely breathtaking. There's the sheer size of it, but also the absolutely beautiful buildings that the walls enclose. The
The entry gate to the Red Fort
See... far too big to be a fort. first building you come to is stunning, and I would have been happy with that. Then you walk past it and you see the 'main event'. I'm not sure if I've reacted to a set of buildings like this before - I just stopped dead, and wanted to burst into tears. The buildings might not be quite as spectacular as the Taj, say, but that I didn't have any real preconceptions made it even more arresting when I actually saw it for the first time.
I've worked out that the few hundred rupees it costs to get a guide is usually well worth it, if only because it turns a building into history. The guide at the Red Fort was worth three times the 100rp I paid him - really interesting to learn the symbolism behind the architecture, and to learn that the buildings that had taken my breath away were just a a shadow of what they once were. Beautiful domed ceilings were once gilded, and a whole palace had a solid silver ceiling.
Perhaps explaining why once the Murghals lost their way a little, the fort became the target of any cash-strapped looter who could raze
The Red Fort market
Like seeing Oxford Street in Buckingham Palace... To give an idea of the scale, at the end of the market, you can just about see the first, least impressive, part of palace complex... an army. Apparently the solid gold, jewel-encrusted Peacock Throne is now sitting in a bank vault in Iran somewhere. My guide had fairly strong opinions on the Murghal emperors who had lived in the palace.
Shah Jahan, apparently, was great - a patron of the arts, a kind leader who, although Muslim, treated all religions with equal respect. The proof of it was in the architecture, where for every Muslim symbol, there was a matching Hindu emblem, along with more than a few nods to the Parsis and Christians. Fortunately for Shah Jahan and his jewel-encrusted Peacock Throne, he was also pretty hard, so looters tended to get short shrift.
Not as hard as his son, Aurangzeb, though, who got a very bad write-up from the guide. Killed too many people, apparently. And way, way too Muslim. A very bad man. Better than his son, though, whose name I didn't catch, but who apparently spent too much time writing poetry and not enough time stopping the Persians from nicking Peacock Thrones. And most of Northern India.
Anyway, after the fort I hit the bazaar. Not as spectacular, but even more fun. Imagine Camden market at it's busiest
(or Borough Market, for the old folk), then add the same number of people again, and shift it into a maze of backstreets full of spice stalls, silk stalls, paint stalls, sweet stalls, bread stalls - think of a stall, and it was there. And then people and shouting and haggling and cows and dogs and kids and cycles and rickshaws and so many smells - some good, some really, really bad. All in alleyways four or five feet wide. Totally overwhelming, and another highlight of the trip.
I managed to get magnificently lost - lost enough to mean that I did eventually get a little bit worried about how I was going to get found again. The deeper into the alleyways I went, the more attention I got for being white, which was half entertaining, and half a little bit intimidating.
Chatted to some old boys for a while about the cricket, which they were listening to on the radio - amazing how obtuse some people can be. Surely everyone knows that one-dayers are the cricketing equivalent of a kickabout in the park, and that the only cricket that really matters is the third test in Mumbai.
Palace arches
Don't know if you can see the carvings in enough detail, but these arches were absolutely beautiful. Maybe their English wasn't quite good enough to get the subtleties of my argument.
- My notes run out here, so the rest is from memory which is, unfortunately, already fading fast -
Once I managed to escape the warren of streets around the bazaar, I got myself lunch - forcing myself to get over the slight food-faddiness that developed after Hampi, I went straight for the street food. Good move. Delicious veg cutlets as a price so cheap that they may as well have been free. Then I headed for the Jama Masjid - the biggest mosque in India, and another of Shah Jehan's building projects.
Another great building, although it couldn't really compete with the impact that the Red Fort had on me. Absolutely bloody huge though. A courtyard as big as a football pitch, and a minaret you can clime for a panoramic view of Delhi. A working mosque, too, which put me slightly on edge - I've discovered that I'm not overly comfortable about being a tourist in someone else's religious ritual.
Fair bit of hassle, too, from the uninvited guide who latched onto me, to the kids chasing me asking for
Delhi bazaar
This, believe it or not, was one of the less hectic streets... pens and rupees. And so many beggars on the front steps of the mosque. So faintly underwhelmed, although tiring somewhat in 40 degree heat and after having been absolutely blown away by the Red Fort, it didn't really get a fair chance.
And this is why I should have written the blog as soon as I got back, because the details are already fading. Although I do remember that dinner was truely awful - my new hotel was a long, long way out of the centre of Delhi, in the affluent south of the city. Slightly nervous about wandering around deserted streets at night, I went for the nearest restaurant. Bad move. Chicken that I'm 70% sure was actually mutton. And it's that 30% that was really worrying, because if it was chicken then it was the weirdest, rankest chicken I've ever had in my life. And even if it was mutton, then it was pretty damn weird mutton to let that 30% doubt slip in.
Street food. Definitely the way to go...
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