Tughlakabad
Feb. 24th, 2008 02:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keyan_bowesI'm in Tokyo. It was spring when I arrived this morning; a few hours later, the temperature plummeted 25 degrees and it's winter again, with a cutting cold wind that makes it feel like it's below freezing. I still will post a bit more about India, though.
A couple of days ago, I went to Tughlakabad, a ruined old fort built of massive stone blocks, on the outskirts of Delhi, built on a rise. It's a place where we picnicked as children, and at the time was quite far outside the city, deserted by all except a troop of monkeys. I wasn't sure what I'd find.
As Delhi grows, it absorbs the surrounding villages, and they morph from picturesque and bucolic places with mud and stone and painted brick huts into squalid, bustling, crowded bottlenecks. No one widens the village roads, and the small lots on which the homes are built turn into the bases of narrow three and four-storey buildings. We passed through village Khanpur, where a stream had become a filthy ditch, black with sludge, in which a couple of pigs waded. On the back of a sow sat an elegant white egret.
As we neared the fort, the traffic tapered off. It's still just outside the city, though probably not for long. It's still nearly deserted. A path climbs up through an old archway and beyond are the ruins. Tughlakabad charges for admission now. It made me feel safer; at least the ticket-takers were around.
I found a few local tourists; a man who offered to be my guide (I refused, I didn't have the time for the full tour); some birds; and the monkeys. The patriarch of the monkey troop sat on the battlements, surveying the countryside. I was careful not to bug him. Monkeys bite, and that means rabies shots.
The fort was as impressive as I recalled. There was an underground passage that I remember being full of bats; I was told as a child that it was an underground market. Sort of a subterranean medieval strip-mall... Now, I heard squeaks and got the distinctive smell of bats in a couple of the rooms off the passage, but I saw none.
There's restoration work going on. I had mixed feelings about that; I think it's better to leave the place alone. But at least it's being done in the same idiom, using the local gravel, with big stones being laid by hand. A group of workers - a man and several women in colorful sarees - had dug a rectangular pit for the distinctive red gravel that they mixed with clay and/ or cement for mortar.
The women carried this in basins on their heads. I asked to take a photograph, and they said I'd have to pay. I offered Rs10; they asked Rs20. I didn't have the heart to bargain, so I gave them the Rs20..
A couple of their little kids played next to an old stone wall, mixing mudpies with a fork, occasionally interrupted by a hopeful striped squirrel. (Indian squirrels look like chipmunks.)
I saw some birds that were very common in Delhi when I was growing up and aren't any more: a green bee-eater, and a hoopoe, and I heard an owl that the would-be guide disturbed when he went by its roost. The place is very dry, and I recalled that the fort - which was a township, really - was abandoned quite soon after it was built because of a shortage of water. (Or so I was told.)
On my way out, I saw the other monkeys - a band of them, with cute infants who hid as soon as I tried to photograph them. Except for one belligerent teenager, who looked at me threateningly and bounced.
As Delhi grows, it absorbs the surrounding villages, and they morph from picturesque and bucolic places with mud and stone and painted brick huts into squalid, bustling, crowded bottlenecks. No one widens the village roads, and the small lots on which the homes are built turn into the bases of narrow three and four-storey buildings. We passed through village Khanpur, where a stream had become a filthy ditch, black with sludge, in which a couple of pigs waded. On the back of a sow sat an elegant white egret.
As we neared the fort, the traffic tapered off. It's still just outside the city, though probably not for long. It's still nearly deserted. A path climbs up through an old archway and beyond are the ruins. Tughlakabad charges for admission now. It made me feel safer; at least the ticket-takers were around.
I found a few local tourists; a man who offered to be my guide (I refused, I didn't have the time for the full tour); some birds; and the monkeys. The patriarch of the monkey troop sat on the battlements, surveying the countryside. I was careful not to bug him. Monkeys bite, and that means rabies shots.
The fort was as impressive as I recalled. There was an underground passage that I remember being full of bats; I was told as a child that it was an underground market. Sort of a subterranean medieval strip-mall... Now, I heard squeaks and got the distinctive smell of bats in a couple of the rooms off the passage, but I saw none.
There's restoration work going on. I had mixed feelings about that; I think it's better to leave the place alone. But at least it's being done in the same idiom, using the local gravel, with big stones being laid by hand. A group of workers - a man and several women in colorful sarees - had dug a rectangular pit for the distinctive red gravel that they mixed with clay and/ or cement for mortar.
The women carried this in basins on their heads. I asked to take a photograph, and they said I'd have to pay. I offered Rs10; they asked Rs20. I didn't have the heart to bargain, so I gave them the Rs20..A couple of their little kids played next to an old stone wall, mixing mudpies with a fork, occasionally interrupted by a hopeful striped squirrel. (Indian squirrels look like chipmunks.)
I saw some birds that were very common in Delhi when I was growing up and aren't any more: a green bee-eater, and a hoopoe, and I heard an owl that the would-be guide disturbed when he went by its roost. The place is very dry, and I recalled that the fort - which was a township, really - was abandoned quite soon after it was built because of a shortage of water. (Or so I was told.)
On my way out, I saw the other monkeys - a band of them, with cute infants who hid as soon as I tried to photograph them. Except for one belligerent teenager, who looked at me threateningly and bounced.
