The Jama Masjid Mosque — India, New Delhi
Delhi is a great city. Modern and ancient at the same time. A millennia old building, with cheap neon signs on them. This is New Delhi. New and old at the same time.
I loved Delhi or “Deli” as the locals usually say it. It is teeming with history and stories to uncover. Askar, my good friend and I were just exploring the city with barely any plans. We basically just looked at the map and decided to start going in a direction. This lead us to many great places, that we otherwise would have probably missed.
The Jama Masjid was actually a semi-planned idea, since we decided to try the world famous century old Karim’s, which is one if not the best traditional restaurant in Delhi. You don’t have to trust my arguably limited knowledge of Indian cuisine, but our Indian friend recommended it as well as the best place to try a good chicken karahi.
But I’m going off topic again. So on our way to Karims, I managed to screw up my gps, so we went the wrong way. This realization came after a good 20–30 minutes of walking in the bazaar, so we figured, what the heck, we will just take the scenic route.
Well, scenic route is a figure of speech anyways. As we were walking a nice young man tried to rob Askar of his phone.
He probably though that such a big phone must be a hassle in the 42+C heat. His thoughtfulness was not well received however and Askar managed to stop the above mentioned kind act. After a little bit of friendly fist waving and yelling, the young man went looking for other people in need of his helping hand and we went on our way to Karim’s, now with one hand always in our pockets.
After a while the textile stores gave way to mechanics and car part dealers and the crowd cleared as well. It was then that we first saw the majestic 17th century mosque.
We were aware that it was here, but weren’t entirely sure if we’ll notice it.
Well it’s quite easy to spot a gigantic mosque with 40m tall minarets in Old Delhi, as there are literally no other buildings as tall in the neighborhood.
I’m not sure if we went to Karim’s first and then to the mosque or vice versa, but the point is, we found ourselves in front of the main gate of Jama Masjid.
The red sandstone and the whole style of the mosque reminded me of Badshahi mosque of Lahore in the Pakistani side of Punjab. The Mughal era layout, the red sandstone and the whole aura of the place was very similar.
With one exception, here when we tried to enter, we were yelled at by a man with a stick to cover our disrespectful legs.
So we went bargaining and managed to bargain the price down to what a local person paid just before us.
With the finest Indian textile around us, we knew, the man with the stick will let us pass.
We entered and it was quite a sight to behold!
We walked around barefoot on the stones.
The thing about these red sandstone is that they conduct and store heat incredibly efficiently. So your majestic pace turns into a hurry and your hurry turns into a sprint to the shades.
In the shades we took pictures with some nice local folks and walked around. We went up to the main gate of the mosque building itself.
Jama Masjid is definitely a sight worth seeing. Its unique in style to this part of the Indian peninsula and the size and detail of its carvings are truly wondrous. It is one of Old Delhi’s most beautiful locations.
And if you pair this sightseeing with Karim’s excellent dishes, you’ve got yourself a nice cultural and culinary adventure.