One of the primary sites in Delhi is Red Fort.  Red Fort was built by the Mughal Emporor Shah Jahan, the same emperor who built the Taj Mahal for his wife.  Shah Jahan moved his court to Delhi and established it as the new capitol of an empire that covered the majority of India. The British East India Company acted as a vassal to this empire in Delhi until 1857.  At the center of the city built for Mughal dominance was Red Fort.  While the fort is a shell of its former glory, it’s still quite impressive.  Visit the photo gallery below to see the details.

After the fort, I met up with Shaubir, a good friend of my colleague Shanks and he took me by cycle rickshaw to a great restaurant in the center of the old city.  We discussed my trip to Kashmir and the hiking I wanted to do, which he has a lot of experience with.  Afterwards, we went and grabbed a tourist booking for a train to Jammu and met up with some of his friends in the cosmopolitan area south of Delhi.  The bar where we had drinks was outside a mall that could have been in any city in the world.  The calm and Western feel was quite a contrast to the chaos and dirt of old Delhi.  Shaubir was a great help to me in planning my trip and I’ll probably meet up with him again in Leh or Manali.