Delhi revisited

A return to Delhi, one of the largest cities in the world. In late 2025 I visited it before and after a three week hiking trip in Ladakh, exploring the few places I’d not seen on my previous four trips in 2019 at the start and end of trips to Northern India and Bhutan.

I visited a bunch of historic sites to the south and east of the Red Fort. Shaheedi Park was a good place to start. This four and a half acre site is Delhi’s first outdoor museum, filled with statues that tell India’s story. Amazingly it only took six months for 10 artists and 700 skilled artisans to turn 250 tonnes of discarded materials into the statues.

They also planted 56,000 trees and shrubs. Visiting on a weekday I had the place to myself, though midday Delhi heat made it a somewhat punishing experience.

The nearby 14th century Feroz Shah Kotla Fort was well worth visiting. It isn’t the Red Fort but is much quieter and an atmospheric place to explore.

The Jami Masjid is still used, with a number of worshippers even on a Thursday.

The gardens were quite popular with locals.

Next to the fort is the Lok Nayak Jaya Prakash Narayan Memorial Park. He was a 20th century Indian Independence leader and political leader also known for his protests against corruption in Bihar in the 1960s.

Not far from here is the National Gandhi Museum, one of three sites close to each other dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi, one of India’s most influential and best known leaders. The original museum opened in Mumbai, shortly after Gandhi’s assassination in 1948, before moving to Delhi in 1961. It has plenty of photos, and the shawl and dhoti worn by Gandhi when he was assassinated, and one of the bullets that were used to kill Gandhi.

Gandhi Darshan is a relatively new park opened across the road from the National Gandhi Museum, dedicated to Gandhi.

The third Gandhi site is the Rajghat Memorial. The black marble platform marks where Gandhi was cremated. There is an external flame and inscriptions of Gandhi’s last words, “Hey Ram”.

Heading north there are many more memorials to India’s leaders. Kisan Ghat is the final resting place of Chaudhary Charan Singh, who was best known for his commitment to the welfare of Indian farmers.

Veer Bhumi is a memorial to Rajiv Gandhi, India’s youngest Prime Minister, who ruled for seven years before being assassinated in 1991.

Nearby is the attractive Raj Ghat Lake, and the general environment was of a pleasant park.

Rajiv Gandhi’s mother Indira Gandhi was also Prime Minister and also assassinated, in 1984. Shakti Sthal is her memorial, the centerpiece of which is a huge 25 tonne monolithic iron ore rock representing her iron will.

Her father, and India’s first Prime Minister, Jawahar Lal Nehru is also memorialised nearby. He died in office of a heart attack in 1964.

There are so many memorials in this part of Delhi. Inder Kumar Gujral Memorial is one of half a dozen simple memorials. He has a full life in his 93 years, including a year as Prime Minister in 1997-98.

The final memorial I visited was to Lal Bahadur Shastri, who was the Prime Minister 1964-1966 before also dying while in office 1966.

This took me to the back of the Red Fort, and to two similarly coloured bridges, the Salimgarh Bridge and Red Fort Railway Bridge. The former connects the Salimgarh Fort to the Red Fort. It was originally built during the reign of Bahadur Shah Zafar and is also known as the Bahadur Shah Gate.

I was pretty wiped out by this point in the afternoon from the heat, waking, and number of sites. While waiting for an Uber I noticed that I was sat by the ruined remains of Calcutta Gate. This was built in 1852 by the British to provide access to a seasonal bridge built of boats outside of the monsoon season.

My next stop, and last of the afternoon, was Swaminarayan Akshardham. This is one of the largest Hindu temples in the world, opened in 2005. No electronics are allowed inside the huge complex, so I couldn’t take any photos unfortunately. It was incredibly ornate but somehow the newness took away from the atmosphere.

I returned to Delhi three weeks later after an epic adventure in Ladakh. It was interesting seeing the outskirts of Delhi from the air, with dense villages surrounded by fields.

I had another afternoon in Delhi to see a few more sights. I started with the rather run down National Rail Museum, which was moderately interesting.

The Indian Air Force Museum was marginally better, though mainly due to my greater interest in planes than trains.

Much better was Hauz Khas District Park, a 200 acre park home to a deer park, lots of monkeys, wonderful trees, a vibrantly green lake (once a Royal water tank), lots of locals out on a Sunday afternoon, and a number of historic sights.