Old Delhi (Shahjahanabad)

A wonderful piece of Mughal pomp, the red-and-white Jama Masjid is India’s largest mosque. Its courtyard is large enough to accommodate the prostrated bodies of 25,000 worshippers. It was designed by Shah Jahan and built by a workforce of five thousand people 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. Broad, red-sandstone staircases lead to gateways on the east, north and southern sides, where worshippers and visitors alike must remove their shoes (the custodian will guard them for you for a small tip).

Once inside the 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 indicating the direction of prayer. The pool in the centre is used for ritual ablutions. At each corner of the square yard a slender minaret crowned with a marble dome rises to the sky, and it’s worth climbing the tower south of the main sanctuary for a view over Delhi. In the northeast corner a white shrine protects a collection of Muhammad’s relics, including his sandals, a hair from his beard, and his “footprint” miraculously embedded in a marble slab.

Old Delhi’s main thoroughfare, Chandni Chowk was once a sublime canal lined with trees and some of the most opulent bazaars in the whole of Asia. The British paved over the canal after 1857. In 2007, the courts ordered a daytime ban on cycle rickshaws along the street, and they were replaced by a fleet of green minibuses, but the ban has been challenged and may not last. In any event, the best way to take it in is on foot. Along it, look out for numbered “heritage buildings” signposted at intervals, with placards outside explaining their historical importance, especially during the 1857 uprising.

When Shah Jahan established his city in 1638, its eastern edges bordered the Yamuna River, and a line of ghats, or steps leading to the water, was installed along the riverbanks. Ghats have been used in India for centuries, for mundane things like washing clothes and bathing, but also for worship and funeral cremation. Raj Ghat, east of Delhi Gate – really more a park than a ghat – is the place where Mahatma Gandhi was cremated, on the day after his assassination in 1948. The Mahatma’s samadhi (cremation memorial), a low black plinth inscribed with his reputed last words, “Hai Ram” (“Oh God”), receives a steady stream of visitors, and he is remembered through prayers here every Friday evening at 5pm, and on the anniversaries of his birth and death (Oct 2 & Jan 30).