Old Delhi, Delhi, India | 2023: This video starts from Sitaram Bazar area of Old Delhi / Chandni Chowk as do so many of the earlier videos. We keep walking along the main road of the Sitaram Bazar area until we reach the adjacent area of Turkman Gate. Turkman Gate is an area that we already explored in an earlier video (Episode 2: • Walk with me | Ep. 02 ... )
In this walk we walk beyond the now famous Razia Sultan Tomb and go deeper within the lanes of Turkman Gate into an area called Pahadi Bhojla. As amazing as it sounds, this area of Chandni Chowk actually used to be a hill or ridge hundreds of years ago and if we explore it today we can still experience the peculiar features of its terrain which is now mostly covered by rows and rows of unplanned houses and buildings.
As we walk in this area we clearly observe an unusual gradient on the road - while all other roads of Old Delhi are more or less flat the roads here felt unusually steep and seemed to ho higher and higher as. we walked. We decided to take a turn into what seemed like a very narrow and dark lane literally called Gali Andheri. As luck would have it, we happened to take just the right turn to observe a wonderful world hidden away from the eyes of most people who visit Chandni Chowk.
Our walk along this narrow lane made us gain altitude with every few meters. We felt the climd with every few steps, as though we were walking in a famed hill station of India and not walking in the heart of the capital city. While walking we try to experienced the experiences that people living in these lanes must have every day in and out and we also got to meet a young boy who lives in this area.
A few hundred meters of walking deeper and deeper in this area brings us to what seems like the highest point of Chandni Chowk. This area and the areas around it are unusually quiet and peaceful for Old Delhi, almost as if as we were gaining, we were also getting away from the unnecessary sights and sounds of the area.
At the highest point, we notice a water tank built by the Delhi Jal Board, aptly located at the maximum altitude possible in this area. We spend some time in this area, taking in the peace and quiet of a Sunday morning while also taking time to put things into perspective - that a place which was a hilly ridge hundreds of years ago was taken over by uncontrolled development and almost looted of its original character. Yet another perspective could be to appreciate its present character, however crowded and congested, and to appreciate the lives of thousands of people who live in this unusually high part of Chandni Chowk. If only we could clim the water tank or get to the roof of one of the houses, the view would be like none other in the area. I can already imagine rows and rows of houses at a decreasingly lower altitude visible over unsually large distances in every direction.
Towards the last part of our walk, we start walking on the other side of this highest point of Pahadi Bhojla and this time see an even more striking landscape - lots and lots of stairs helping us get down to lower ground. We notice that this specific area we were walking in is called Pahadi Imli, probably referring to some old famous Tamarind / Imli tree that must have been located in this hilly area of Old Delhi. We continue walking and continue descending the stairs until we reach the average ground level and average sound level of Chandni Chowk. Our video and walk for the day ends here.