Delhi Heritage Stories: Guided Photography Tour by Foot

Two hours, two of Delhi's best-framed places

This is a short, specific tour: you walk from a Mughal tomb into a garden of 15th-century tombs, and you are being guided by someone who thinks about light and composition rather than only dates.

Safdarjung Tomb

Built in 1754 for a Mughal prime minister, in the last decades before the empire collapsed — which is exactly why it is interesting. The money had run out. Marble was stripped from an older tomb to face it. The proportions are slightly heavier than Humayun's Tomb two centuries earlier, the dome a little too tall for its base.

It is often described as the last flicker of Mughal architecture, and photographically it is a gift: a symmetrical red-and-buff facade, an empty charbagh garden, and almost nobody in the frame, because the crowds all go elsewhere.

Best light is the first hour after opening, when the sun comes across the eastern gateway.

Lodhi Garden

Ninety acres of lawn with five tombs scattered through it, built by the Sayyid and Lodhi dynasties in the 1400s and now surrounded by joggers, yoga classes and parakeets.

The Bara Gumbad and its mosque carry the densest plasterwork. Sheesh Gumbad still holds fragments of the blue tiles that once covered it — hence the name. Mohammed Shah's tomb is the octagonal one with the sloping buttresses, the oldest in the park.

Light through the arches in the late afternoon, mist in the early morning in December and January, and bougainvillea against grey stone for most of the year.

What you get

A guide who will tell you where to stand and why, and the history behind what you are framing. Bring whatever camera you own — this works on a phone, and several of the best angles here are phone angles.

Entry to Safdarjung Tomb is a small separate fee. Lodhi Garden is free.