This Disneyesque Akshardham temple complex covers 12 hectares (almost 15 football pitches) on the eastern banks of the Yamuna. It cost Rs4,000 million or US$85 million, took an amazingly short five years to complete and was finished in 2005. The complex belongs to the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha Hindu sect whose guru is Swaminarayan. The central dome is 43m...
The Charity Bird Hospital is one of Delhi’s oddities. In a city where proper health care is only available to the few, there is a hospital for birds. It can be found behind the Digamber Jain Temple at the Red Fort end of Chandni Chowk. The hospital is run by Jains whose religion binds them to holding all life as precious....
Connaught Place was designed by British architects to be the commercial and retail heart of New Delhi. The Georgian style was deliberately chosen to remind the British memsahibs of Cheltenham and Bath and to provide them with somewhere dry, cool and clean to shop. It was named Connaught Place after the Duke of Connaught, uncle of George V. Originally it...
Dilli Haat replicates a traditional village market (haat) and presents a wide range of crafts from the different states of India. Some shops are permanent while others rotate on a fortnightly basis providing always something different to see. The range is not as great as can be found in the State Emporia along Baba Kharak Singh Marg or in the Central Cottage Industries Emporium...
Easily recognised by its golden dome an orange-cloth wrapped flagpole, Gurdwara Bangla Sahib is the most important Sikh gurdwara (temple) in Delhi. Its importance comes from its association with the eighth Sikh guru Guru Har Krishan who lived here during his stay in Delhi in 1664. He was remarkable in that he was only five when he was appointed guru...
Humayun was an unlucky fellow in some respects. Only the second Mughal emperor of India, he was chucked off his throne by an Afghan warlord, Sher Shah, after only a ten-year reign. Then for fifteen years he fretted in Kabul, Afghanistan. After Sher Shah’s death there was a squabble over the succession to the imperial throne and Humayun seized his...
Originally named the All India War Memorial, India Gate is the ceremonial heart of India. The 45-metre-high India Gate was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens as a war memorial to commemorate those who died fighting for the British in World War I and the Third Anglo-Afghan War of 1919. Since independence the names of those who have died in India’s...
The ISKON Temple (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) can be found in southeast Delhi on the aptly named Hari Krishna Hill. Its shikharas or spires rise to 30m and can be easily seen from afar, especially from the nearby Lotus Temple. Until the opening of the AksharAkshardhamdham complex of temples this was the grandest temple in Delhi. The temple is...
Jama Masjid, meaning Friday Mosque, is the largest mosque in India with a courtyard that can hold 25,000. This was another of Shah Jahan’s building commissions designed in the classic amalgam of Muslim and Hindu architecture of the period. It was completed in 1656 AD. The mosque has three gates – east, north and south. The eastern gateway of the...
Khan Market is the market of choice for expats and well-heeled Delhiites. Have a bespoke pair of shoes made here, browse bookshops for hours, search for classical and pop Indian music, get the latest electronic toy or just relish in some of the fine cafes in this block. Behind the market tucked away in a corner is a wine and...
The Lakshmi Narayan Temple is an impressively decorated temple dedicated to Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and good fortune, and her consort Vishnu the preserver in his avatar as Narayan.The temple was built between 1933-39 by the industrialist BD Birla and is also known as the Birla Temple. It was inaugurated by Mahatma Gandhi in 1939 and according to conditions...
Housed in Jaipur House near India Gate, the National Gallery of Modern Art has an excellent representative collection of 15,000-odd works by Indian, colonial and international artists. Unfortunately due to size limitations only a small fraction is on view at any one time. The paintings include a number from important European travelling artists such as the 18th- 19th-century uncle and...
The National Railway Museum will be of great interest to anyone even remotely interested in railways. Parked in museum grounds are numerous retired locomotives spanning the many years of India’s railways. Some special ones include: an engine that runs on one rail with a second outrigger wheel running on a path alongside, a rail car converted from a motor coach and...
The building of the Purana Qila, meaning Old Fort, was commenced by the emperor Humayun in 1530. It was then called Dinpanah or ‘Refuge of the Faithful’. Humayun only reigned for ten years before being usurped by an Afghan warlord Sher Shah who razed his predecessor’s buildings and erected his own. He renamed the city Shergarh, parts of which can...
The Qutb Minar complex houses several restored ancient monuments within parkland. The soaring Qutb Minar dominates the skyline. These monuments were built between 1193 AD and 1368 AD on the ruins of Lal Kot. This was the citadel built by the Rajput ruler Anangpal in 739 AD and added to as the Qila Rai Pithoraby a later ruler, Prithviraj Chauhan. Prithviraj was the...
At the western end of Rajpath, its large dome just poking above the horizon, is the President’s Palace or Rashtrapati Bhavan. This immense building, more extensive than the Palace of Versailles, was built by the British to be the Viceroy’s Palace. The viceroy represented the British Emperor/Empress of India and ruled in his or her name. Accordingly the palace was...
The Red Fort (Lal Qila) was built to accommodate the emperor, Shah Jahan, when he moved his capital here from Agra in 1648. It was a city within a city housing the imperial family in spacious and luxurious palaces while the people who served them lived in a shanty town near the eastern edge of the fort. The fort lies at...
Behind Fatehpur Mosque and stretching along Swami Vivekanand Marg in Khari Baoli is Gadodia Market. Dating from the 17th century, this is reputedly Asia’s largest wholesale spice market selling all kinds of spices, nuts, herbs plus rice, tea and other dried foods. Cluttering the street and waiting to unload will be long barrows piled high with white cotton parcels of product....
This is a surprising feature to be found right in the heart of modern New Delhi, but it predates the new city by about 500 years and would have been used by the rural villages that once populated this area. Baolis are a feature of northern India and were built to deal with seasonal fluctuations in water supply, from the...