So I thought we would start from the top and work our way down. It's essentially on a large hill. All we would have to do is walk our way up to the Adham Khan Tomb and go from there. Now, the road above th
e Qutb Minar complex was very narrow. Shops and houses were up above, parking lots for the tourist buses and cars below. The road was loaded with blind spots, there were no sidewalks, plenty of pee spots and really no place to go when a bus would come by. I had to carry Julia, there's no place for her to walk. And I thought the buses were all for the Qutb complex, but as we soon noticed, there was a bus terminal in the direction we were going. Once we got to Adham Khan tomb, we had to fight through the cars, motorcycles, tuk-tuks and buses just to cross the 2 lane road. It was complete chaos.On the right of the road were groups of people and tables set up with, of all things, typewriters ... ? Signs were designating this as the place to go if you needed a Notary.
The stairway leading up to the tomb was in bad shape. A herd of goats were sleeping on the grounds. This is one of the few places that I saw monkeys. They were just hanging around too. People were taking naps. The tomb, overall, was in pretty bad shape.
Not far from here was the palace of the last Mughal emperor, the Zafar Palace. The LA
ST Mughal's summer palace - this should be something cool to see. One problem, getting there.I don't really plan these day trips to well. If you have experience traveling in foreign countries you know that American guide books usually don't have accurate maps of the areas that you want to go to. Especially if you want to see some place off the travelers path, far from the tourists, the places where there's no room to park a bus ! These are the real places to go see. To see how the real India lives. People in their daily lives giving you looks like - "You know YOU shouldn't be here" and "Damn I just saw a lost white guy - WHERE'S MY camera ???"
The "Palace" was completely broken down. A large wood door, the largest I have ever seen was locked with huge locks. The large door had a smaller wooden entry door that was open. It was one of those times when you think to yourself..... "Can we really go in there ?" But by the tim
e I thought that, Wayne had already entered.We walked into a large entryway. And somewhere in this cavernous space you could hear voices, so maybe there was a tour group in here, or something. Turns out, it was something...... a group of local men and boys were playing cricket in one of the courtyards. I didn't exactly fell too comfortable around this place. You know when you walk into a room and everyone goes disturbingly quiet ???
One local guy was trying to be helpful and kind of showed me around. He kept pointing out into the surrounding apartments and saying "Jungle" - a description fro the park, which was a bit overgrown - and other stuff in broken English. There just seemed to be something sinister about this place. And hence - I didn't pull out my camera to take too many shots. Fortunately, Wayne got a couple good pictures !
The palace was completely open to look around, like most relics in India. Yet, it was a pretty dangerous place to be in, especially with 2 kids. The palace had several stairwells with broken stairs - all, by the way, were stone; No wood here except for the doors. At the top of the stairs there were, in parts of the palace, broken floor where you could easily fall 2-3 storeys. At the end of the palace was a Mosque that was in pretty good condition.
So, I didn't feel too comfortable there with the guys hanging out, the broken liquor bottles, and dangerous drop offs. So we left to find more relics around the "park".
Wiki has a good write up about the Mahal. Here are 2 pictures from that source.
