Photos of a bastion, part of the Siri Fort fortifications in Delhi. This bastion is pretty well preserved, but is hidden in the urban village of Shahpur Jat. I took these photos while on a walking tour of the Shahpur Jat/Siri area. Will have to go back there to click better photos when there’s no winter fog! Continue reading
Just some photos from recent trips to Old Delhi, taken in Dec ’11 and Jan ’12.
A few more winter photos from Kashmir. Continue reading
I revisited the old sun (Surya) temple at Martand while it was under snow, and here are the pics! Continue reading
A few photos of the Mughal Gardens at Achabal in Kashmir, all snowed up in the winter. These gardens and waterworks date back to the 17th c AD and are supposedly also called Begampur Bagh, having been constructed by Nur Jahan. The last building in the sequence of pavilions over the central water channel hides a spring that feeds the water channels of the garden and then forms a stream through the town of Achabal. Continue reading
I’ve made a couple more system maps for the Delhi Metro rail network. They can be accessed at my Chasing the Metro blog. Clicking on the maps below will also take you to that blog (specifically its Route Maps page). Continue reading
You see some crazy things while walking around Delhi!
Just a few photos from around Delhi.
Here are a few examples of monument restoration from Agra and Ajmer, all of Mughal-era structures from the 16th and 17th c AD. The usual impression we get when we visit historic monuments is that we are looking at structures that have come down over the centuries in the state we see them in presently, but in reality many of these structures have been restored and rebuilt, some multiple times. While there are a lot of arguments and positions regarding the whys and hows of restoration among the conservation/preservation community, from an architectural history viewpoint what’s important is how we can interpret historic monuments when the monument is not all as historic as made out to be. At a general level it entails analyzing the structure keeping in mind and “seeing around” the restoration. Continue reading
The present urban fabric of many cities and towns in India have their roots in the late 19th c and early 20th c, especially the “old town”/”old city” parts of town. Individual structures in these places may be older, but as functional urban entities, this is usually how old the urban landscape is. I’ve become really interested in these parts of town, and while visiting Ajmer recently sought it’s “downtown” out. Pushkar as a whole seems to be from that era. Continue reading
Sarson ke Khet 