An Evening with Titou (Part Deux): Humayun's Tomb and a Delhi Right of Passage

Read part 1 of this story

"You go pay, and I'll be here when you come out" said Titou as we pulled up to the gate of Humayun's Tomb.

As I approached the ticket booth, I noticed that they charge more to foreigners than they do to Indians. In fact, it's a 1000% markup. I guess the monument, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is meant to be a park for the Indians who work in the area and as a tourist attraction for foreigners.

As I passed under through the deep gateway tunnel, I gazed upon the Tomb for the first time. It's beautiful in pictures; to be in its presence is indescribable (see picture).

Humayun's Tomb is a textbook example of 16th Century Mughal-era Indian architecture, similar in style to the Taj Mahal (in fact, it's believed that this tomb was the inspiration for the Taj Mahal). The Tomb is built on a pedestal roughly 15 feet in height that meets the earth with an arcade on the perimeter. Anyone can enter into the arches and climb one of eight sets of steep, dangerously weathered staircases to reach the entrance to the grave.

The cube-like Tomb is topped with a dome; it's flanked on four corners by Chharti, or ornamental dome pavilions. Humayun's Tomb is set among a Charbagh, which is a grid-form garden bearing symbolic reference to the rivers of Islamic paradise. There were lots of families having picnics, and young couples getting cozy (Titou would later inform me that they recently had to install gates in order to close the park at night because of "frisky" young couples).

I took it as an opportunity to practice photography, as I walked around trying to capture the setting sunlight reflecting off the marble and red sandstone facade. My attempts are shown at right, but probably the best of them all is in the first post in this series.

After leaving, I wanted to check out the Qutub Minar, another famous Delhi landmark.

Titou graciously obliged, but not without a stop along the way.

Arts and Crafts

"T.K. I take you to this place, eh?" he confirmed, pointing to the postcard of the Qutub Minar.

"Yes that would be great."

"But first, I take you shopping!" he blurted as he turned on the motor of his tuk-tuk. Before I could voice my opposition, we were already on our way, and the beeping of the traffic was too loud for me to speak over it and tell him that I had zero interest in shopping.

We pulled up to the Padma Arts & Crafts center which is apparently "on the way" to the Qutub Minar. "T.K. (Hinglish for "okay") You go shop for 10 minutes, and then we go to Minar," he bargained.

"Ya know, Titou. I'm just not interested, and we're losing sunlight quickly. Can we please just go?"

"You shop."

Not one to argue with authority (at least in this setting), I went in for a look. This place had a wide variety of what one could only call "stuff." Lots of cloths and trinkets and nik naks and chachkhas. I went deeper into the store, checked out a couple of rugs, and then retreated to the Tuk-Tuk.

"You buy anything?"

"No." I replied.

Dismayed, Titou backed up the tuk-tuk (he did this by pushing, because they don't have a reverse gear). I hopped in, and he made some gesture to the doorkeeper at the shop that, if I had to guess, was disrespectful.

"He didn't give me a gift. You didn't stay long enough," he said with a smile.

Realizing that I had just been duped out of 5 precious minutes of precious daytime, I felt a tad annoyed. That was quickly replaced by an internal celebration over the fact that I had just gone through a sort of right of passage: I had been mildly swindled by a tuk-tuk driver. I was almost glad to take part in it.

We continued on to the Qutub Minar.

(to be continued . . .)