Sufdarjungs Tomb

After settling in to big city living, finding our local markets and all the other essential things needed to survive, we started to have a look around at the other trappings New Delhi has on offer. Our first tourist type outing was to Safdarjung's Tomb (still my favorite out of the tombs in New Delhi). Safdarjung's tomb is modest in comparison to most and that's was makes it such a nice place to visit. It is understated in it's appearance and is a lovely place to just wander around an imagine how life must have been here 2-300 years ago. The tomb is beautiful with a lovely expansive surrounding garden.

After arriving at the Tomb we were greeted by one of the local tourist guides. He offered to take us around and give an overview of the tomb and it's surrounds, for a small fee of course. This happens at most of India's major tourist attractions of historical significance. You arrive and are then pounced on by guides, both legitimate and not. Thankfully the good ones are relatively easy to identify as they carry a government issued identity card which lets you know who and what they are.

The tomb was built in 1754 and is representative of the many Mughal tombs (albeit smaller than most) built during their reign. The tomb is significant as it was the last tomb built by the Mughal's prior to the British securing their stranglehold on the subcontinent.

The tomb is located very close to work so we often drive by it and it always looks fantastic with lovely surrounding gardens. If your coming to Delhi then Sufdarjung is a must see.

Living in New Delhi

We arrived in New Delhi India on 12 January 2009 at around 3am. The flight in over the city gave us a real feel for what we were in for in the form of a thick blanket of smoke haze enveloping the city. It was winter and we had arrived in the middle of the Indian Harvest Festival. What this transpired into for us was equivalent to an Australian bushfire. Exiting the plane onto the tarmac we were presented with an intense, overwhelming and almost suffocating thick burnt air resulting from the locals burning everything in sight. We were told the burning was in celebration of the harvest just being finalised but the Delhi winter temperatures also necessitate the locals burning whatever they can get there hands on to keep warm.

The next shock for us was the car trip from the airport to our temporary accommodation at Svelte Hotel at the Select City Walk Shopping Centre in the suburb of Saket. We were presented with what looked like a war ravaged city in complete disarray, rubble and rubbish everywhere. At this point I was left wondering what had I done and how was the family going to survive a three year post in New Delhi. This was further reinforced when Felix said to me 'daddy what has happened to this city - has a bomb dropped here?'. The whole family was shell shocked and I was desperately looking for a reason, some justification, or at least thread of justification to be in New Delhi. The saving grace came in the form of the Svelte Hotel and surprisingly a shopping mall. For the next month whilst in temporary accommodation these two things allowed us as a family to resume some resemblance of our life in Australia. I suppose you could say we had to adjust in a major way. Life in New Delhi was different, very different and frankly there is nothing you could every do to prepare yourself for picking up your whole life in Australia, your family and your home, your friends and your work and transpose it to a life in New Delhi.