Humayun's Tomb

After the Lotus Temple, we grabbed lunch at a small restaurant in an alley and then headed to Humayan's Tomb - what would be our last attraction of the day (the traffic unfortunately limits our site seeing).

Humayan was the 2nd Moghul emperor, son of Babar (Babur?) and father of Akbar. The Moghuls ruled India from the time Babar conquered it in the early 16th century through the arrival of the British in the mid 19th. Despite the long reign, many places cite "the five Mughal emperors" - just the first five, even through there were closer to 30. I asked our tour guide about this and he said it's because the rest were good for nothing, didn't accomplish much of anything worth remembering. Brutal.

Back to Humayan. He was actually forced to withdraw from India due to the conquering force of Sher Shah (the Lion King), and fled to Iran. For 15 years until Sher Shah died, and then came back and reconquered India. He died 6 months later, falling down some stairs. Akbar built him a glorious tomb - oddly immediately next to the already existing tomb of Sher Shah's top general, Isa Khan. This was very strange, been buried next to your enemy? But it's because they are both proximal to the shrine of Nizamuddin, who was a very revered Sufi saint.

Humayan's tomb was clearly one of the models for the Taj Mahal, you see a lot of the main elements beginning to take form there. It's quite huge, and in the middle of a very large walled garden. As a side note, walled garden in Persian is pairi daeza - whence the English word paradise. And it turns out, not just Humayun is buried there - but also about 100 members of the Mughal family. One of the placards referred to it as the Dormitory of the Mughals.

The sun was rapidly coming down, so after that, we just went back to our hotel. A little recovery later, we all enjoyed some drinks at the bar, where Ani continued to try hard to get Barry into cricket (on TV in the background) followed by a large Friendsgiving meal.

For everyone else, tomorrow is their last day in India... but we're just getting started. One more day in Delhi and then off to Ani's home in Mysore.Read more