My first night in Delhi consisted of me arriving relatively late by plane and taking a long cab ride to a luxury hotel in the dark.  So I didn’t see much of anything.  The next day I woke up intent on exploring.  I chose Humayun’s Tomb as my first stop.  Wikipedia describes Humayun’s Tomb like this:

“Humayun’s Tomb is a complex of buildings built as the Mughal Emperor Humayun’s tomb, commissioned by Humayun’s wife Hamida Banu Begum in 1562 CE.”

I asked the concierge if it was walkable and he said no, so, being a moron, I tried anyway.  I wanted to see Delhi and I always feel most connected to a place when I walk through it.  It was a decision I would come to regret when I arrived drenched in sweat and exhausted.

The hotel I stayed at was in a fairly secluded, upscale part of town and the walk basically circled the Delhi Golf Club.  Yet, there was quite a lot of the poverty and filth that everyone had told me to expect from Delhi.  It was especially disconcerting because poor, dirty people were asleep on the sidewalks in front of huge gated mansions.  It was a pretty terrible introduction to Delhi even though I came knowing what I would see.  Having travelled in a few of the crowded, poor neighborhoods now, that juxtaposition of poverty and wealth still seems to be the most jarring way to be introduced to Delhi’s poverty.  So the walk pretty much sucked.

I arrived at Humayun’s Tomb before anyone else, so I had the whole place to myself. It’s a huge Mughal building built of red sandstone. It’s impressively huge but its grandeur is marred a little by its barrenness.  The building itself is in decent condition, but it feels like an empty shell.  I imagine the grandeur of it during the Mughal empire must have been fantastic.  Today, it, like Red Fort sits in the middle of crowded Delhi as a reminder of the reign of that massive empire.

I found the garden around Humayun’s Tomb to be very pleasant as well.  There are huge grass areas with trees to sit and relax in and many other sections of the complex with other smaller tombs.  Especially when visiting early in the morning, the seclusion and privacy of it all was an awesome contrast with the bustle of the city around it.

After the tomb, I took a taxi to India Gate.  India Gate is a huge arch in the center of New Delhi.  Wikipedia states, “Originally known as All India War Memorial, it is a prominent landmark in Delhi and commemorates the 90,000 soldiers of the erstwhile British Indian Army who lost their lives fighting for the Indian Empire in World War I and the Afghan Wars.”

India Gate is a very big arch in the center of a park, but there isn’t too much to it.  Under the gate, a soldier guards a burning flame by a black marble cenotaph.  This is Amar Jawan Jyoti, India’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  Perhaps due to its placement in a large, semi-bustling park, or the fact that there were quite a few people selling chips, water and photographs just at its edges, but the monument didn’t make nearly the same impact on me emotionally as for instance, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the eternal flame in Arlington Cemetery near Washington, DC.

I only spent a few minutes at India Gate.  From pictures I’ve seen and based on the lighting around it, it seems like it might be much more impressive at night.  So I’d suggest that anyone visiting in the future see it after dark.  After India Gate, I walked home and let my jet lag turn a 30 minute nap into a seven hour sleep.