Of all the days on our itinerary, my time wandering the streets of Old Delhi made me the most nervous. I don’t do well in crowds or in dirty situations. But this turned out to be my favorite time in India. The crowds I worried about I could handle, and the dirt was not as bad as my overactive imagination had made it seem. I loved all the unique patches of paint and plaster, with one peeling away from the other, and took numerous photos. I enjoyed hearing the stories of everything we saw and watching the monkeys overhead. We took a tuk-tuk ride. I remembered learning about these in grammar school and thought how awful it was that people had to pull another person around, but it is a way for locals to make money. We took both an electric and a human-driven one; obviously, the human-driven was the preferred one.

The weathered doors on the far left are likely wrought-iron from the late 19th or early 20th century, and this was probably a merchant’s house. The steep stairs suggest that the upper floor was, and perhaps still is, used as a residence. As you can see hanging clothes in the picture, this building is still inhabited. 

Now for our tuk-tuk ride.

India Gate was completed in 1931, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens as a memorial to the more than 70,000 Indian soldiers who died in World War I and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. Thirteen thousand names of fallen soldiers are inscribed in this structure.   I knew from visiting the World War I gravesides in Belgium that India’s sacrifice had been enormous; This monument emphasizes the significance of that substantial sacrifice.

From a distance, it looks like a triumphal arch, but step inside, and you feel alone. The city noise goes quiet, the sandstone turns gold, and the details begin to speak.

One of the first things you notice looking upward — as the photograph far rught below  — is the stone funerary urn, carved like a rising flame. The coffered ceiling curves overhead in perfect geometry, the kind of craftsmanship you only see standing directly beneath the arch.

Behind India Gate, the empty colonial-era canopy now houses the statue of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, a leader of India’s freedom movement. (Left photograph below)  He replaced the earlier statue of King George. It’s a subtle but powerful shift from a British imperial memorial to one centered on an Indian figure, allowing history and the eventual democracy to share the same space.

In the late afternoon, we visited the Qutb Complex, which is fun to photograph but overwhelming in its history.

Below left: Is Alauddin Khilji’s gateway built in 1311, Indo-Islamic architecture. Aladuddin Khilji’s vision was to double the size of the Qutb Comples.  But the only completed building is the Alai Dawaza. The second building that was started is the Alai Minar, the tower was intended to surpass the height of any in the Qutb Complex, but only the base was completed, shown in the lower right photo.