Humayun’s Tomb

The tomb is listed as a world heritage site for being the subcontinent’s first garden tomb, the trend setter for a number of subsequent structures, culminating in the Taj Mahal (yes, I’ll be getting to that quite soon now).

model showing Humayun’s Tomb in its garden

The tomb sits at the centre of a walled garden criss-crossed by paths and water channels, although the current arrangement is a twentieth century restoration, the original gardens having suffered some centuries of neglect followed by a British style replanting in the nineteenth century.

Humayun’s Tomb – entrance gate

The use of the site for a Muslim refugee camp during the partition of India in the 1940s didn’t help matters either.  So whilst a very pleasant place to be, I doubt it comes anywhere near the original experience, intended to represent Paradise.

Humayun’s Tomb – garden water channels

The tomb of the emperor himself is under the central dome. This space is surrounded by a maze of smaller chambers, lit by beautiful pierced stone screen windows and filled with other Mughal tombs.

Humayun’s Tomb – my obsession with lattice-work windows continues unabaited

Similarly, the niches around the edges of the platform on which the tomb sits are also full of graves. In total there are about 150 burials here of members of the Mughal dynasty.

Humayun’s Tomb – other tombs in a side chamber

There are a number of other associated tombs and mosques outside the garden, including one octagonal one that looks lovely in photographs but sadly was under restoration when I visited. For my Lego model I chose to build this hammam steam bath), which lies in the middle of one of the encircling walls.

Humayun’s Tomb – hammam

I’m pretty certain I was sober, so I can’t explain why the picture is wonky. As it turns out, the photograph of the model I chose to use is also wonky, but in the other direction, so they can cancel each other out.

Lego Humayun’s Tomb

Lahore Gate, Red Fort, Delhi

Once inside the main gate you find yourself in a covered bazaar (now full of souvenir shops) where items the royal household might like to buy, such as silk and jewellery, were sold. Which I suppose is rather like having a branch of Harrods just inside Buckingham Palace.

Diwan-i-Aam, Red Fort, Delhi

Having shaken off the hawkers you get to a large gateway building, in the upper level of which musicians would once play, and this in turn leads to the impressive public audience hall, the Diwan-i-Aam, reached through a garden.

Throne in the Diwan-i-Aam, Red Fort, Delhi

The hall has a raised marble throne that is shrouded in anti-pigeon netting which, along with the endless procession of people having their photograph taken in front of it (I still fail to understand this almost universal urge), make it hard to appreciate the fine carving and inlay work.

detail of throne in the Diwan-i-Aam, Red Fort, Delhi

Behind the public audience hall are the private apartments, a line of pavilions on a raised platform looking out over the river (or at least, where the river used to be) and connected together by a marble water channel known as the “Stream of Paradise”. 

stream of Paradise in the Rang Mahal, Red Fort, Delhi

Continuing the metaphysical theme, the palace is blessed with extensive gardens, filled with water features and pavilions, the whole intended to evoke the Quran’s description of Paradise. Indeed there is an inscription of a verse of thirteenth century Sufi poetry on one building that essentially says “If there is a paradise on earth, it is here”.

private apartments, Red Fort, Delhi

These buildings are in white marble with carved, gilded and inlaid decoration. The palace is considered, according to the UNESCO listing, “to represent the zenith of Mughal creativity”. It really is gloriously ornate.

decoration on the Diwan-i-Khas, Red Fort, Delhi

Unfortunately much of the wealth of the palace, that which had not already been plundered by the Persians (their haul included the emperor’s Peacock Throne, adorned with the Koh-i-Noor diamond) in the eighteenth century, was taken by the British who also added some uninspiring buildings of their own to the fort. So while the palace looks marvellous, it is empty and gives only a hint of its former lavish glory.

elephant door knob, Red Fort, Delhi

For the Lego model I chose the Diwan-i-Khas, the private audience hall. The view I’ve built is the narrower facade, on the right in this picture.

Diwan-i-Khas, Red Fort, Delhi

Allegorical symbols of Paradise not shown.

Lego Red Fort

Here’s a bonus photograph of a squirrel eating almonds from the hand of a German lady I chatted to. She said she’d found these were their favourite.

friendly squirrel at the Red Fort, Delhi

Qutb Minar

That trip to the hotel involved joining the scrum queue at the pre-paid Police taxi booth in the station car park, finding a driver who was prepared to actually take the voucher without the promise of an extra substantial ‘tip’ and then scarpering with my backpack when we finally found the hotel, with the cry “more money” ringing in my ears. Delhi taxi drivers are rapacious.

Qutb Minar – calligraphic carving

In addition to the general attraction of being Delhi, the city has three world heritage sites, my first visit being to this one, a few kilometers south of the centre via the terrific metro (where they frisk and bag scan everyone on entry – imagine that on the Tube!)  and a slightly too long walk.

reused Hindu temple columns at Qutb Minar mosque

Qutb Minar is a 72m high red sandstone minaret from the early thirteenth century, with later alterations to the top, which also lost its crowning cupola in an earthquake. The surrounding monuments include the remains of two mosques, one built using stone pillars from demolished Hindu temples.

Iron pillar in mosque courtyard at Qutb Minar

The site is further garnished with some ornate tombs, a 7m tall iron pillar renowned for its un-corroded state (due to serendipitous metallurgy and environment, not magic, religion or aliens) and the huge base of the unfinished Alai Minar, intended to be twice the height of Qutb.

Alai Minar at Qutb Minar

Finally, there is a marble-inlaid entrance gate called the Alai Darwaza, which I chose for my Lego model.

Alai Darwaza gate at Qutb Minar

My dome is a little too small, but otherwise, I felt this one turned out not too badly.

Lego Qutb Minar

To the south is a scrubby wooded Archeological Park dotted with a large number of ruins from various periods. I explored them on the way back to a different (but equally inconveniently located) metro station. My favourite was this deep step well and surrounding building.

Archealogical Park near Qutb Minar

This photograph shows what is just over the lip in the foreground of the picture above.

Archealogical Park near Qutb Minar

Sanchi – Great Stupa

There is actually another World Heritage site in the area, called the Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka, which is a group of rock paintings from the Mesolithic period onwards. But I decided to give those a miss.

Sanchi – Great Stupa gateway

Sanchi is the oldest Buddhist sanctuary in existence, having been occupied from the 3rd century BC, and the Great Stupa dates from this period, although it was enlarged over the next two centuries. It is  the oldest stone structure in India, according to a source cited on Wikipedia.

Sanchi – remains of a monastery (or perhaps a palace)

Later monuments were built up until the 12th century AD, when the site was abandoned. It was ‘rediscovered’ by the British in the early nineteenth century and restored to its current magnificent condition in the twentieth.

Sanchi – Great Stupa gateway carving

What makes this site particularly wonderful are the fabulous carved stone gateways; four around the Great Stupa and one by a smaller stupa. They are covered with scenes depicting the lives of the Buddha and other legends and despite being stone, replicate the structure of wooden ones.

Sanchi – Great Stupa gateway carving

This was another site where tourists, particularly lone ones like me, were not in abundance, leading to rather a lot of requests to take my photograph from other visitors. I still find it bewildering that for some people I seemed to be the most interesting thing there; I gazed at the monuments whilst trying to ignore them gazing at me.

Sanchi – Great Stupa gateway carving

For the Lego model, I went with stupa number 3, the one with a single carved gateway.

Sanchi – stupa 3

I’ve cunningly built it as viewed from behind, to avoid dealing with the curved steps on the other side. It’s not that impressive, sorry.

Lego Sanchi

Champaner mosque

It is rather hard to describe this world heritage site, partly because it is huge and covers a bewildering range of remains and partly because I only visited a bit of it as a result of getting a tad lost at one point.

Champaner mosque

Areas I didn’t find until too late in the day are spread over the side of Pavagadh hill with a popular pilgrimage temple on the top, accessible via a cable car. There are a lot of unexcavated archaeological pre-historic remains alongside more recent vestiges of structures from the eighth to sixteenth centuries including Hindu temples and water systems.

Champaner mosque window

What I saw were a group of mosques dotted amongst the fields at the bottom of the hill, within and around the ancient walled city. This walled area was originally the royal enclosure of a sixteenth century capital of Gujarat and now contains the  modern village of Champaner.

Champaner fortified walls

The mosques are attractive, with tall thin minarets, decorative carving and pierced stone windows. The style is apparently a blend of Hindu and Islamic elements. They also seem virtually unvisited; I doubt many tourists make it to the one at the end of a long path through the woods. I wasn’t even sure I was going the right way, I just kept going because it was a lovely day and I was having a delightfully peaceful walk, peace and quiet being hard to come by in India.

Champaner mosque carving

I still can’t tell if I saw the best bit of this world heritage site whilst avoiding some dull piles of masonry, or whether I missed something wonderful. I do rather wish I’d had the time for the cable car though, maybe another time.

Champaner mosque pavilion

I’ve built the centre portion of this mosque for the Lego model:

Champaner mosque

The centre dome is gold because I only have two of the tan ones with me.

Lego Champaner mosque

Ajanta Caves

The V&A museum, where I used to work, has a large collection of 19th century oil on canvas copies of these paintings and the large rolled ones occupied a prime spot in one of the off-site storage facilities my colleagues worked in. I was often hearing about the Ajanta paintings being moved or unrolled for inspection or discussing where best to store them in the future. It felt strange to come to see the real thing.

Ajanta Caves

The paintings, together with the carving and sculpture are seen as masterpiece of Buddhist art.

Ajanta Caves

The caves are located in a cliff around a U-shaped bend in a river. They were built in two phases, the first from around 200BC to 100AD and the second in the 5th and 6th centuries AD, where the decoration is more ornate. The site was abandoned around 650AD favour of the Ellora site (see previous post) 100km away.

Ajanta Caves

After this, the cave entrances became obscured by regrowing forest and whilst not forgotten by the local population, went mostly unvisited. They were accidentally ‘rediscovered’ in 1819 by a British army officer out hunting tigers. In typical fashion, he vandalised a painting by carving his name and the date in the wall.

Ajanta Caves – inside one of the main painted caves

To visit the caves, you have to get a bus from the main entrance to the ticket office. Before you reach the bus though, you run the gamut of a maze of souvenir stalls and men trying to sell you overpriced torches in order to better see the paintings. I already have a tiny torch so declined. It proved virtually hopeless though, in the deep gloom of the cave, so I mostly saw the paintings by the light of the huge torches wielded by tour guides, but even they were only able to spotlight a tiny part of the overall design. I found myself wishing I’d had a good look at the V&A copies before I’d left!

Ajanta Caves – painting outside a cave

Since flash photography is quite rightly forbidden, all I can show you are some murky pictures taken inside plus a few bits of painting in the exterior arcade of some caves. I would urge you to do a Google image search to get an idea of the true wonderfullness of these frescos as well as having a look at the photographs of the V&A copies.

Ajanta Caves – gloomy unfocussed shot of a mural

For the Lego model, I’ve built the outside facade of one of the more ornate caves, although I couldn’t get far enough away to take a whole photograph of it.

Ajanta Caves

Ajanta Caves

Please try to ignore the bits of light showing between the bricks!

Lego Ajanta Caves

Ellora Caves

Both the Ellora and Ajanta cave are a day trip by bus away. Yes, both are cave sites.  Apologies to those of you dulled out by reading about holes in the ground; much as I like visiting them I’m finding building the Lego models rather challenging, which is why you’ve had to wait a while for this post.

Ellora Caves

The Ellora caves are a group of thirty-four temples and monasteries carved out of a 2km length of basalt cliff, between 600 and 1000AD.

Ellora Caves

They extend along the cliff in approximately chronological order, with the Buddhist sites at one end, the Hindu ones in the middle and the later Jain temples a hike away at the other end.

Ellora Caves

Most of them are excavated pillared halls of varying sizes, some of them multi-storey. Many have wonderful carvings, both decorative and figurative.

Ellora Caves

At the centre of the group is the most impressive. A huge free-standing Hindu temple, with associated structures,  entirely cut free from the surrounding rock.

Ellora Caves

The mass of material that had to be excavated is best appreciated by climbing up the cliff and looking down on it, whilst doing one’s best not to topple over the edge.

Ellora Caves

My model is a much more modest affair however. Rather than just do one cave (to avoid the temptation of buildng a very dull but easy one), I decided to attempt to replicate this view of a number of caves:

Ellora Caves

For something that took me so much pondering to build, it’s not that impressive.

Lego Ellora Caves

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus – that’s a statue of Progress on top of the central dome

The architect, F. W. Stevens, designed a massive High Victorian Gothic pile, “based on late medieval Italian models”, according to UNESCO. It certainly has an impressive collection of twiddly bits, while anyone familiar with St Pancras station in London will probably have a twinge of deja vu.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus

To this Victoriana were added aspects inspired by Indian palace architecture – the turrets, pointed arches and groundplan are cited in the UNESCO listing.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus – detail

Inside it has a reasonably ornate booking hall but beyond some decorative ironwork, the rest of the public interior didn’t appear that to have that much ornament. Much of the building is railway offices however, so I can’t answer for how that looks inside.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus – booking hall

The columns in the entrances at the front of each side wing have some lovely carvings of animals and plants.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus – carving on pillars

For the Lego model, I attempted to build something based on this facade of the north wing, which holds the booking office on the ground floor. It isn’t easy to get a clear photograph, so sorry about that.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus

You’ll see that I’ve not bothered reproducing the big white modern sign. You will also notice that is is pretty crummy photograph. I had to venture up onto the roof of my hotel and balance the model on an air conditioning unit in front of the drying laundry in order to get it in the light of the sinking sun.

Lego Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus

To make up for that picture, here’s a bonus extra one of stone monkeys on a column capital.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus – monkeys!

Mumbai – Gateway of India

I had an early morning train north to a station that connects to Mumbai, but not only was the onward train an overnight one that would have left me kicking my heels in Solapur for ten hours, but my ticket wasn’t even confirmed, so the wait could turn out to be for nothing. So I decided to tackle the last 400 or so kilometres by bus instead. And as has often been the case, my bus station luck held and there was a rackety bus to the intermediate city of Pune leaving almost immediately.

Elephanta Caves – a dignity-free way to reach them from the dock

It took seven hours, but a lot of that was spent in traffic jams or trying to overtake massively overloaded ox carts full of sugar cane. The final leg of the marathon was a lovely air-conditioned coach, although it let us out in a somewhat dubious suburb at around one in the morning. But I made it: another public transport win!

Elephanta Caves – entrance to one of the smaller caves

So, back to the caves, or more precisely, excavations. They are a group of rock-cut Hindu and Buddhist shrines. The island is hilly and the caves are reached up a long stair flanked with souvenir stalls. The site’s date is debated, but thought to be between the sixth and eighth centuries.

Elephanta Caves – Trimurti

The largest cave (number 1)  is also the most interesting, being full of images of Shiva including a famous three-headed depiction called the Trimurti.

Elephanta Caves – relief panel detail

The walls have wonderful relief panels illustrating various scenes from Shiva stories, which where apparently once painted as well. The UNESCO listing refers to them when it says that at Elephanta “Indian art has found one of its most perfect expressions”.

Elephanta Caves – interior of cave no. 1

The excavated spaces, particularly of cave 1, are full of columns, with sculpted beams to mimic the appearance of built structures.

Elephanta Caves – lingam shrine

Cave 1 also has an inner lingam shrine with huge guardians sculpted on the outer walls, plus two subsidiary shrines opening off side courtyards. Here’s a creative commons plan of the layout borrowed from Wikipedia, (where you’ll find the key to the numbers).

Elephanta – map of main cave (created by Wikipedia user TheMandarin)

Should you be wondering, the name of the Elephanta island is derived from a huge stone elephant sculpture found here by the Portuguese, who promptly chopped it up and took it to the mainland, in that way colonisers have of buggering up nice things. It is apparently now at Mumbai zoo.

Elephanta Caves

I used the above view of one of the side entrances to cave 1 for the Lego model:

Lego Elephanta Caves

Pattadakal

Badami itself has a few temples on the outskirts of town, plus some other important historic sites nearby, but I lazily opted just to see the WHS, which is a bus ride away along remarkably potholed roads, even for India.

Pattadakal

Pattadakal is an imaculately kept site, with well watered lawns, a few shady trees and neatly clipped little hedges. It is a delight to visit, or at least it would be if lone foreign visitors did not attract so much attention. I had three separate groups of Indian school children crowding round and pushing their mobile phones into my face to take my photograph, lots of people wanting to pose with me for pictures and one father virtually chased me up a path with a small child under his arm in the hope of photographing it alongside me. It wasn’t as if I was the only tourist there, but I was one of the few not in a tour group.

Pattadakal

I would like to say that I bore all this unwanted attention with grace and stoicism, but that would be a lie; it started to fray my nerves and the only thing that stopped me getting really cross was deciding to see this as a kind of penance on behalf of all the English people who have ever taken intrusive non-consensual snaps of exotic foreigners. You bastards owe me big time.

Pattadakal – Nandi

Amidst all this though, the temples (nine Hindu, one Jain) were great. They date from the seventh and eighth centuries and were built by the Chalukya dynasty, who ruled much of central and southern India between the sixth and twelth centuries. This was a place they held their coronations.

Pattadakal – northern style roof

The architecture on the site is a mix of both southern ‘Dravidian’ and northern Indian styles, which, as far as I understand, are most easily distinguished by the different designs of the towering roofs over the temple sanctuaries.

Pattadakal – southern style roof

Many of the buildings had wonderful carvings on the interior columns, showing scenes that I wished I knew the meaning of or stories behind.

Pattadakal

The temple interiors are lit by pierced stone windows, the varied (mostly) geometric patterns of which I had a compulsion to keep photographing.

Pattadakal – pierced stone window

Two of the temples on site, including the largest, where built by two Queens of the same king, to celebrate some of his various battle victories. They are both very similar and UNESCO describe the larger Virupaksha temple as a “masterpiece of Chalukya art”.

Pattadakal

Most of the buildings are far too intricate for me to be able to render them in Lego, so I had to chose one of the small simple ones. I went for this one

Pattadakal

but could not of course manage the beautifully subtle curve on the roof: instead I had to go for a blocky approximation.

Lego Pattadakal