India Travel

Connaught Place has snack bars for quick stops, and plenty of upmarket restaurants, as well as budget sit-down joints that attract a largely Western clientele. Even if you can’t afford a meal in an expensive restaurant, it’s worth going into air-conditioned comfort and treating yourself to silver-service tea. filter coffee, or a cool milkshake. For patties, sandwiches and take-out meat and vegdishes, head behind the market at the top of Janpath, where you’ll find great snacks at incredibly good value. Several familiar fast-food joints are represented in CP and elsewhere in Delhi and there is a new TCW. CP’s larger restaurants remain closed on Sunday mornings. Food malls are beginning to be fashionable, with the likes of Ditii Ham in south Delhi (see p. 141) and Anarkali Food Plaza, unfortunately located at the sterile exhibition ground of Pragati Maidan (Gate 3), which comes alive at show rime and weekends (5pm-l lpm;closed in winter). The restaurants listed below are marked on the map ot Connaught Place on p.118.

Cafe 100. B-Block, Connaught Place. Ice creams galore, plus pizzas, burgers and fries to take away or eat in (standing) Long lunchtime queues; buy a meal ticket before you reach the counter. Don’t Pass Me By, 79 Scindia House. Friendly, inexpensive and tasty veg and non-veg Chinese restaurant just off Janpath, popular with travellers staying nearby. Go early for full-on breakfasts. They also run a reliable travel service. El Arab, Sansad Marg. Great place for Middle-Eastern dishes on the corner of Sansad Marg and the outer ring of Connaught Place, with prices ranging from medium to high. Tasty hummus, baba ghanoush and Lebanese salads in an excellent-value daily lunchtime buffet. Gaylord, Connaught Place, off Sansad Marg. Originally Delhi’s top nightclub, now limited to serving standard but expensive Indian dishes in plush surroundings lit by glittering chandeliers. Host, F-Block. Air-con relief from the Indian heat, and a good place to sit with a beer, silver-service tea, or strong filter coffee. The standard multi-cuisine, however, is unexciting and meals are overpriced.

Koui!, 2 E-Block, Connaught Place. Fresh, no-smoking restaurant and takeaway serving exclusively south Indian veg dishes, with great dosas, and delicious full thalis (around Rs150) at lunchtime.

Kwality. Regal Building. Sansad Marg. High standards of service and hygiene, with good but unspectacular international cuisine; renowned for its channa batura, a particular speciality of Delhi. National, opposite L-Block, Connaught Place.The best of a bunch of inexpensive sit-down restaurants, with great fiery curries, and an endless supply of chapatis.

Nirula’s, 135 L-Block, Connaught Place. Choose from the downstairs snack bar (serving packed lunches), the Chinese or tasty multi-cuisine rooms upstairs, or sample some of the fifty flavours of delicious ice cream in the parlour. A second branch on N-Block, near the Wimpy, is a popular snack bar with smooth ice-cream shakes.

Parikrama, Kasturba Gandhi Marg. Novel and expensive Indian and Chinese cuisine in a revolving restaurant worth a visit only for the superb views over Delhi; a single rotation takes 100 minutes. Pizza Express,

Connaught Place. An ambience and menu identical with their restaurants abroad, so are the prices, which makes it expensive for Delhi, especially their drinks menu. Rodeo, 12 A-Block, Connaught Place. New-Mexican restaurant with Wild West waiters, crooning karaoke, swinging saddle bar stools, pitchers of beer, cocktails, excellent fajitas and moderate prices.

Sona Rupa, 46 Janpath. Good Indian and Chinese food, extremely popular with families. No-nonsense prices, and dramatic dosa-flinging in the open-fronted kitchen downstairs. Beer and north Indian food upstairs; buy a food ticket at the till and present it to trie cooks.

Spice Route, Hotel Imperial, Janpath. The beautifully decorated and expensive restaurant specializes in spicy Thai and Kerala cuisine and is widely considered to be one of the best restaurants in Asia.

Standard, 44 Regal Buildings, Connajght Place. Close to the Regal Cinema, with two food halls, one for the best-value south Indian thalis in town, and the other for north Indian and tandoori specials and chilled beer on tap. Surang, Aika Hotel. 16-90 P-Block, Connaught Place. A minor treat - delicious tandoori and Mughlai specialities. Vegetarians should try the Vega restaurant (also in the Alkg HoteH, where the purest Indian veg dishes are served with ginger kulcha.

United Coffee House, 15 E-Block, Connaught Place. Together with the Host, this is a long-standing favourite, and does great coffee and cold beer. The food is very good and portions are ample, but as a whole it’s oveipriced.

Zen. 25 B-Block. Connaught Place. Excellent Chinese and Japanese meals served m a leisurely and traditional style, with chopsticks, and Western snacks (3-7pm], Distinctly upper-class, with prices to match, and a selection of wines, spirits and beers.

Just north of Old Delhi, not far from the Inter-state Bus Terminal, the peaceful Qudsia Gardens are a fading reminder of the magnificent pleasure gardens commissioned in the mid-eighteenth century by Queen Qudsia. favourite mistress of Muhammad Shah, and mother of Ahmed Shah. The original mosque still stands, but part of the park was taken over by the British Freemasons, who built a hall and banned Indians from entering the park in the afternoons. There’s also a Hindu monument here; a mounted figure represents the valiant Pratap Singh who is famed for his unfaltering defiance of Akbar. Near the gardens, on Commissioners Lane, is Mother Teresa’s Orphanage, “Missionaries of Charity” where voluntary help is welcomed Just west of Qudsia Gardens, on Qudsia Road, is Delhi’s oldest burial ground. Nicholson Cemetery, named after Brigadier General John Nicholson, who led the attacks on Delhi in 1857 when the British were striving to regain the city from the Nationalists. The graveyard is still used, but most of the headstones show the names of British residents killed defending this outpost of the British Empire, or stricken as young children by tatal diseases at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The prosperous fifth city of Delhi, Firozabad, founded in 1354, stretched from the north ridge to Hauz Khas in the south; today few traces survive save the remains of the palace of Firoz Shah Kotla, set amid ornamental gardens 500m east of Delhi Gate. Its most incongruous and yet distinctive element is the single polished sandstone Ashokan Column (third century BC). carried down the Yamuna by raft from Ambala to grace a palace that is now a crumbling ruin. The 14m-high column, the second brought to Delhi, continues to protrude above the surroundings, withstanding the ravages of time and dominating the ill-kept gardens. Next to a baoii lie the massive rums of a mosque which once accommodated over 10,000 worshippers; Timur (Tamerlane) is said to have been so impressed by it that it served as the model for his great mosque in Samarkand. Today, surrounded by large and busy roads, the gardens and their monuments lie almost forgotten, and few tourists stop by.

When Shah Jahan established his city in 1638, its eastern edges bordered the Reiver Yamuna, and a line of ghats, or steps leading to the water, was installed ilong the riverbanks. Ghats have been used in India for centuries, primarily for worship, but also for washing clothes and bathing, and for the final ritual, cremation. Raj Ghat, the site of the cremations of three of modern India’s most revered figures, Mahatma Gandhi (1948), Indira Gandhi (1984) and her son kajiv (1991), is more of a park than aghat,lying well away from the river bank. The Mahatma’s samadhi, a low black plinth, receives the attentions and prayers sf an almost constant stream of visitors. Walk northwards from here to the qui-;ter memorials of the two former prime ministers. Rajiv remembered in a Striking frieze and his mother marked by a red-grey stone monolith. You can continue through the park all the way to the southern end of the Red Fort, roughly lkm to the north.
Mahatma Gandhi is further remembered at his samadhi by prayers held even,’ Friday evening, and on the anniversaries of his birth and death (Oct 2 & Jan 30), and by the small Gandhi Memorial Museum (daily except Thurs 9.30am-5.30pm) opposite Raj Ghat.

On Sundays you can watch a film on Meena Bazaar A distinctively Islamic bazaar of cramped shops clustered around the base of the Jami Masjid, full of clothes, domestic implements and smells not found in Hindu regions of the city. Here you can buy burquas, dupattas, topis, caged chickens, bangles, kebabs, sticky sweetmeats and devotional pictures for shrines. Car Parts Bazaar South of the Jami Masjid, the stalls that make up this bazaar stock, or rather pile high, new and secondhand automobile parts from all models, ranging from speedometers and the all-important horn to complete engines.

Chswri Bazaar Named after the Marathi word chawri (meeting place), this street, running west from the Jami Masjid, was once flanked by huge mansions which were destroyed by the British after the Mutiny. In the nineteenth century it was famous for its “dancing girls", who looked into the streets below from arched windows and balconies and beckoned men with enticing glances; they were moved out by the Delhi Municipal Corporation in the twentieth century. Today the shops specialize in copper and brass Buddhas, Vishnus, Krishnas, bells, lamps, ashtrays, masks and boxes.

The long road, Nai Sarak, which connects Chawri Bazaar with Chandni Chowk, is lined with nineteenth- and twentieth-century buildings whose lower storeys are used for making and selling paper, and houses shops stocking educational books and stationery. Kalan Mahal A small market street further south of the Jami Masjid near the Kalan Masjid, Kalan Mahal is the gathering place for brass polishers, and also has stalls displaying intricately carved bone necklaces.

Poultry and Fish Markets East of Kalan Mahal the air is filled with the unmistakable smell of fish. Piled high on lorries and stored in barrels of ice, transported between cramped stalls on the heads of porters, every imaginable kind of fish is traded here before finding its way onto plates all over the city. In between fish stalls, chickens lie cramped in stacked cages before being slaughtered and plucked. Head towards Netaji Subash Marg to get into the thick of the poultry scene, and watch out for the “cul-de-sacs” in the fish market. While most traders sleep at the back of their pungent patches, few visitors can stand more than half an hour in Old Delhi’s smelliest corner.

Gandhi’s political and personal life (March—Oct Hindi 6pm, English 7pm; Nov-Feb 4 & 5pm) after taking in the displays of photographs and writings in the museum.

Old Delhi’s trading is carried out in bustling bazaars, where shops huddle together in open houses or beneath makeshift awnings, and between them stock an incredible array of goods ranging from fish and spices to currency garlands and giant candles. If you take time to amble down streets branching off Chandni Chowk and running south of the mosque, you’ll come across lively markets of all kinds, each concentrating on one particular trade.

Chor Bazaar A curious bazaar behind the old ramparts of the Red Fort, which comes to life on Sundays to trade a mix of “secondhand” and allegedly stolen goods.
Kinari Bazaar A colourful street set behind the guradwara on Chandni Chowk, and connected to the main road by Dariba Kalan, “the street of incomparable pearl", which is the centre for jewellers. The shops in Kinari Bazaar overflow with bright wedding finery, including garlands made of rupee notes, grooms’ turbans, rosettes and glistening tinsel used by Hindus, Christians and Muslims in vivid and noisy marriage ceremonies. In October (the month of Bam Lila) the shops stock props for the annual theatre productions -bows and arrows, cardboard swords and fake heads for the evil nine-headed King Ravana.

Naya Bazaar Spice market on Khari Baoli, near Fatehpuri Masjid, clouded with the fine dust of flour and spices, and heavy with rich aromas. The nuts, spices and dried fruits sold here are said to be the best in Delhi, and many are sold to wholesalers by the sack; weighed-down porters load their burdens onto ox carts which trundle off to other parts of the city through the mass of motorized traffic. The covered Gadodia Market, just off Khari Baoii, is a gathering place for wholesalers who weigh their goods on huge old-fashioned scales. Among the spices and condiments you can find aniseed, turmeric, pomegranate, dried mangoes, ginger, saffron, reetha nuts (used for washing hair and cleaning silver), lotus seeds, pickles, sugars, chutneys and edible leaves of silver paper used to coat sweets and cakes.

Tucked behind fragrant mounds of marigolds, roses and jasmine blossoms sold on Chandni Chowk just west of the Jain temple, the large marble Gauri Shankar temple, dominated by its eight-hundred-year-old lingam, is Delhi’s holiest Shiva temple. Devotees enter up a narrow flight of marble steps, flanked by pillars carved with chains and bells, that opens onto a spacious courtyard, always a scene of animated devotional activity. Inside, offerings for sale include bilva (wood apple) leaves, chandan (sandalwood paste), marigolds, red powder, rice, and cotton threads.The main sanctuary holds bejewelled statues of Gauri (Parvati) and Shankar (Shiva) standing beneath a silver canopy, and the ancient brown stone iingam resting on a marble yoni encased in silver and draped with silver serpents. Shrines to other deities line the south wall.

Delhi’s oldest Digambara Jain temple, directly opposite the entrance to the Red Fort, at the east end of Chandm Chowk, was built in 1526, but has been modified and added to ever since, and remains a haven of tranquillity amid the noise and chaos of the main street. Though not as ornate as the fine temples in Gujarat and Rajasthan, it does boast detailed carvings, and gilded paintwork in the antechambers surrounding the main shrine to Parshvanath. the twenty-third tirthemkara. You’ll have to remove your shoes, and hand them over with your bags and all leather articles to a kiosk before entering.

The Jain Bird Hospital (free but donations are appreciated), in the temple courtyard, puts into practice the Jam principle that all life is sacred, admitting up to sixty sick birds per day. It serves as a rescue sanctuary for partridges, caught and wounded by fowlers and bought in bulk by jam merchants who bring them here to recover, and there are separate wards for pigeons, parrots, sparrows (notoriously vulnerable to deadly whirring ceiling fans) and domestic fowl. Squirrels, who will not hurt the birds, are also treated here, but birds of prey are seen on a strictly outpatient basis, as they are not vegetarian. Most of the cages are home to pigeons with a disease that brings on paralysis. As their condition improves they are moved to larger cages closer to the roof, and eventually released.

Old Delhi’s red and white Jami Masjid (Rs10; Rs50 extra for camera), dominating the surrounding markets around 500m to the west o( the Red Fort, may look huge from a distance, but feels nothing short of immense once you’ve climbed the wide staircases to the arched gateways and entered the open courtyard, large enough to accommodate the bending bodies of up to 25,000 worshippers. This is India’s largest mosque, designed by the eminent architect Shah Jahan, and built by a workforce of 5000 between 1644 and 1656. Originally called Masjid-i-Jahanuma ("mosque commanding a view of the world"), this grand structure stands on Bho Jhala. one of Shahjahanabad’s two hills, and looks east to the sprawling Red Fort, and down on the seething streets of Old Delhi
all around. Broad red sandstone staircases lead to gateways on the east, north and southern sides, where all visitors must remove their shoes and pay the entrance fee. If you’re wearing shorts, you’ll have to rent a lunghi to wrap around your legs and hide your knees.

Once inside the stadium-like courtyard, your eyes will be drawn to the three bulbous marble domes crowning the main prayer hall on the west side (facing Mecca), fronted by a series of high cusped arches, and sheltering the mihrab. the central niche in the west wall reserved for the prayer leader. Worshippers use the prayer hall on most days, extending into the courtyard and even filling it on Fridays and other holy days. The pool in the centre is used for washing feet, hands and faces before prayer. Ar each corner of the square yard a slender minaret crowned with a marble dome rises to the sky, and it’s wel! worth climbing the tower south of the main sanctuary (Rs10; Rs5 extra for camera) for an unrivalled view over Delhi, ancient and modern. In the northeast corner a white shrine protects a collection of Muhammad’s relics, shrouded in pungent rose petals and watched over by keepers who are keen to reveal the contents, for a small baksheesh: two sections of the Koran written on deerskin by relatives of the prophet, a red beard-hair of Muhammad’s, his sandals, and his “footprint” miraculously embedded in a marble slab.

Each night a Sound and Light show takes place in the Red Fort: the palaces are dramatically lit, and a historical commentary blares from crackly loudspeakers. Trie show starts after sunset and lasts an hour (in Hindi Feb-April & Sept-Oct 7pm, May-Aug 7.30pm, Nov-Jan 6pm; in English Feb-April & Sept-Oct 8.30pm, May-Aug 9pm, Nov-Jan 7.30pm; Rs30; S011/327 4580). The mosquitoes are ferocious, so bring repellent. Heavy monsoon rains may affect summer shows.

Khas Mahal was used by the emperor, who would appear here daily before throngs gathered on the riverbanks below. In 1911, when Delhi was declared capital, King George V (emperor of India) and Queen Mary sat here before the citizens of Delhi.

North of Khas Mahal, in the large Diwan-i-Khas (hall of private audience), the emperor would address the highest nobles of his court. Today it’s rhe fines: building in the fort, a marble pavilion shaded by a roof raised on stolid pillars embellished with amber,jade and gold, meeting in ornate scalloped arches. On the north and south walls you can still make out the Persian inscription attributed to Shah Jahan’s prime minister:

Agar Firdaus bar ru-e-zamin ast Hamin ast o hamin ast o hamin ast. (If there be paradise on the face of earth, It is this, Oh, it is this, Oh, it is this.)

A marble and gold peacock throne inlaid with rubies, sapphires and diamonds once stood on the central pedestal, bypassed by a “Stream of Paradise” that gurgled through the cool chamber. It took seven years to construct, and was the pride of the fort, but the Persian Nadir Shah took it back to his kingdom as booty after a raid in 1739.

A little further north are the hammams, or baths, sunken into the marble floor inlaid with delicate patterns of precious stones, and dappled in jewel-coloured light that filters through stained-glass windows. The western chamber contained hot baths while the eastern apartment, with fountains of rose-water, was used as a dressing room.

“West of the baths the tiny Moti Masjid, built by Aurangzeb, is beautifully proportioned, but desperately in need of maintenance. In the gardens beyond, pavilions stand among symmetrical flowerbeds and neat lawns intersected by stream-beds that once bubbled with water drawn from the Yamuna.

The largest of Old Delhi’s monuments is Lai Qila, or Red Fort (daily dawi to dusk; 35 [Rs5]), whose thick red sandstone walls, bulging with turrets anc bastions, rise above a wide dry moat in the northeast corner of the original cin of Shahjahanabad. The fort covers a semi-octagonal area of almost 2km, it: longest walls facing the town in the west and the River Yamuna in the east Work was started on the fort - modelled on the royal citadel in Agra - in 1639 and it was completed by 1648. It contains all the expected trappings of the centre of Moghul government: halls of public and private audience, domed and arched marble palaces, plush private apartments, a mosque, and elaborately designed gardens. Today the Yamuna no longer flows close to the east wall, the “Stream of Paradise” no longer trickles through each palace, copper-plated domes have been replaced with plainer marble domes, and there are few signs of the precious stones and gems once set into die marble walls. Nevertheless, the fort remains an impressive testimony to Moghul grandeur, despite being attacked and plundered by the Persian emperor Nadir Shah in 1739, and by British soldiers during the battles of 1857 - as well as being rubbed, touched and worn down by thousands of marvelling tourists.

Entrance to the fort is through the mighty three-storey Lahori Gate in the centre of the west wall. A booking office sells tickets just outside, and eager guides will offer their services at negotiable prices (Rs30-50) - generally more than twice the price that you’d pay within. The mam entrance opens onto Chatta Chowk, a covered street flanked with arched cells that used to house Delhi’s most talented jewellers, carpet-makers, goldsmiths and silk-weavers, but now stock the usual souvenirs: miniatures, hookahs, brass ornaments, stone and woodcarvings and low-quality jewellery, just beyond a small restaurant at the end of Chatta Chowk, the road stretches past the military colony into the heart of the tort, coming to an end at Naubhat Khana. the erstwhile “drum house", where music was once played five times a day and which now bears scant remains of its original painting.

From Naubhat Khana, a path runs east through wide lawns to the hall of public audience, the Diwan-i-Am.This lofty hall, with sturdy pillars supporting its roof and its floor raised on a high platform, was the scene of daily public appearances by the emperor until the custom was stopped by Aurangzcb. When in use, it was strewn with silk carpets and partitioned with hanging tapestries and curtains. Set against the west wall is “the seat of the shadow of God", a marble throne surrounded by twelve panels inlaid with precious stones. It was designed by an artist from Bordeaux, whose frieze of the Greek god Orpheus with his lute makes a surprising departure from the more usual floral designs of the Moghuls. Lord Curzon, viceroy of India from 1898 to 19(15, restored the hall and returned the emperor’s seat from the British Museum in 1909.

The palaces in the tort along the east wall face spacious gardens in the west and overlook the banks of theYamuna, once the scene of animal fights laid on to entertain the royal occupants. Immediately east of the Diwan-i-Am, Rang Mahal, the “Palace of Colour", housed the emperors wives and mistresses. “The crowning jewel of Shah Jahan’s seraglio” was crowned with gilded turrets, delicately painted and decorated with intricate mosaics of mirrors, and with a ceiling overlaid with gold and silver that was reflected in a central pool in the marble floor. Unfortunately, it was greatly defaced when the British used it as an Officers’ Mess after the Mutiny, and today is a shadow of its former glory. The similar Mumtaz Mahal, south of the main zenana, or women’s quarters, and probably used by princesses, is now a museum (daily except Fri 10am—5pm) housing weaponry, textiles, carpets, ornate chess sets and hookahs.

On the northern side of Rang Mahal, the marble Khas Mahal was the personal palace of the emperor, divided into separate apartments for worship, sleeping and sitting.The southern chamber, Tosh Khana (robe room), has a stunning marble filigree screen on its north wall, carved with the scales of justice. Viewing the screen from the north you’ll see suns surrounding the scales, but from the south these look more like moons. The octagonal tower project-