The Man Who Loved to Build.....

You will remember Shah Jahan, the Mughal Emperor who built the Taj Mahal.  Well, he also built the massive Red Fort in Delhi and that became the residence of the Emperors.

It is built of red sandstone as are parts of the Taj Mahal site.  Much of the marble and many semi-precious stones that were used at this site were stripped away by subsequent rulers of India--including the British.

This was our first stop when we reached Delhi last Friday.  Delhi, by the way, is a magnificent city--so much history beside modern developments.    

This is the drum house at the forand the lawns which were at one time covered in marble.  It apparently was the spot where the people would sit when they came to hear the Emperor.

My cousin, Yvonne, has just recommended three novels set in this era by Indu Sundaresan, the Taj Mahal Trilogy.  They sound like girlie books and I look forward to reading them.

To the left, the ballroom where I can imagine the characters in the novels dancing the night away.

 Meena Bazaar has a variety of shops today as it did in the days of the Mughal Empire.  The Emperor's daughters would go to the bazaar once a week, through a series of underground tunnels, to shop for jewelry--and probably cloth.

Obviously, women have enjoyed shopping for centuries, and Delhi has always been the place to do that.  More about shopping in Delhi tomorrow........

Back to the ballroom.  It originally had gold on the ceiling and marble columns inlaid with semi- precious gems and diamonds.  Many of these reflected light and that is how the facility was lighted.  At night, torches were placed outside and the inside would be brightened by the reflected light.

This work has been restored to look like the original but, as mentioned before, the valuable stones were taken long ago.

 These gardens look out toward the Yamuna River which appears to have dried up in this part of Delhi.  It is the same river that flows behind the Taj Mahal in Agra.

This was the preferred transportation route of the Emperor when travelling from Delhi to Agra.

We used the Yamuna Expressway for our trip!

Some school children were on a field trip at the Red Fort that day.  We have seen groups of students at just about every site we have visited.

Back in Chandigarh, our students would have preferred to be on a field trip today.  Instead, the first years wrote their first ever university exam--Business 100.

Lots of tension as they arrived this morning!  But, the good news is they all lived to tell of it, and now they are fully initiated university students.

Our visitors today were Hardeep Grewal (on George's left) who is a computer technology professor in Ludhiana and brother of Gurdeep who lives in Abbotsford.
On George's right is Hardeep's friend, Kamaljeet Singh Sidhu.  He is an Advocate (lawyer) in the High Court in Chandigarh.

We hope to visit Hardeep's home in the next week and at some time go to court (to visit) with Kamaljeet.