Hazrat Nizam etc etc

Stop three on our Delhi tour was Hazrat Nizam-ud-din Dargah, the name of which we could never remember or pronounce. This stop was An Experience.

I had never heard of this Sufi shrine before this trip, but our Lonely Planet guide has it marked as a "top choice" for New Delhi and raves that "it's one of Delhi's most extraordinary pleasures to experience the buzz around the site ..." That hooked me. I was determined to see this place.

The shrine is in the middle of an ancient neighborhood just across a busy road from Humayun's Tomb. The area around the shrines (there are actually several to different saints and poets) has been settled and busy since medieval times, and my sense was that it hasn't changed a whole lot over the years.

It's impossible to navigate the neighborhood's tangled alleys by car, so our driver stopped on the main road and pointed us in the right direction. I was immediately glad that we hadn't decided to come in the evening. Here are some scenes from our walk back out of the neighborhood, when we were assured that we weren't walking to our doom and therefore felt relaxed enough to take pictures. These ones are courtesy of Caroline.

The streets were lined with vendors selling anything and everything.

This boy is carrying glasses of chai, or milk tea. I had to include this photo because the scene is so ... Indian.

Just when I was beginning to think Lonely Planet had led me into a tourist trap of a deadlier nature than usual, the alley narrowed even further. Men sold flowers, books of poetry or biographies of the saints, and chadurs (a cloth used as an offering at the Sufi shrines) from booths crammed together along both sides of the alley. The space was so tight that most of the vendors sat up on tall stools or on the display counter of their booths. People started to try to get us to pay them to guard our shoes. I relaxed. It all meant that we were nearly there. It's strange what gives me the sense these days that all is safe and normal.

A hint to anyone who might visit this place in the future: You still have quite a way to go when the first shoe guards start yelling that you have to take off your shoes. We followed the locals and got all the way to the entrance arch before we had to remove our shoes. Then we decided to go in shifts. Caroline and the kids and I went first while John stood over our pile of shoes. Then he went in after us (with Samuel, since he wanted to go again ... my little mystic).

The arch marking the entrance to Hazrat Nizam ud-din Dargah, with chadur vendors

Through the entrance are several small tombs and shrines surrounding a kind of courtyard. The golden shrine of Nizamuddin Aulia is the most prominent.

Nizamuddin shrine

porch of Nizamuddin shrine

Women aren't allowed inside the shrines, but one of the men at the tomb of the poet Amir Khusrau showed Caroline and me where we could peek in through the screening. What we saw is similar to this photo that John took inside the Nizamuddin tomb. Pilgrims throw flowers and chadurs over the burial site.

Don't worry ... John asked for permission before taking this photo.

This man is preparing to enter the tomb of Amir Khusrau. We saw several women sitting around the outside of the shrine and men just inside the wall reading the Koran or meditating.

The best word I can come up with to describe the feeling of this place is "mystical." It was crowded and a little crazy, but the pilgrims come to honor people they consider to be supremely spiritual, whether it's because of their poetry or their good works or their teachings. Men were performing qawwali music in the courtyard, which added to the feeling of busy worship.

I'll admit to having some doubts during our trek through the alleys to find this place, but I'm glad that we persevered. I'll probably never experience a place like this again. If you're ever in Delhi, I highly recommend a stop here. I wouldn't go through that neighborhood at night, though, and I wouldn't do it as a lone female. To be fair, everyone was perfectly helpful and friendly. It's just all a bit ... medieval, I guess. But we made it! And it was pretty cool.