We are in Delhi and this is the Qutub Minar (or Qutb or Qutab Minar) which is the world’s tallest brick minaret. It’s a 238 foot tall red sandstone minaret which is five stories high and has 378 steps leading to the top. It lies within the Qutub complex which our guide said was the original first city of Delhi and first capital of India. Construction on the minaret began in 1193 but was added on to later and so wasn’t finished until 1368. This complex originally had 27 Hindu temples but like many ancient places in the world, they were torn down to build this minaret and some of the other current buildings. The area had a mosque, various buildings with domes, arches, covered walkways, carved walls, pillars, ponds and a 4th or 5th century iron pillar. From what I read, this was the number one tourist stop in India in 2006 with almost 4 million visitors, versus 2.5 million visitors to the Taj Mahal. The mosque is dead today and the place is clearly not what it once was, but it was still well worth visiting. One side note was that the whole area was thick with rosy-cheeked parakeets as well as other birds and animals.

In the area of Delhi around the Qutub Minar, we passed some so-so neighborhoods. But we also passed a golf course and our guide said it was one of 18 golf courses in Delhi. We also passed an engineering college and our guide said that current graduates of this college start at salaries of $120,000 U.S. I saw people living in this area that I doubt will make that much money in their lifetimes.

You can see the minaret and a couple of other buildings in the first photo.

You can see some of the sandstone arches in the second photo which had very detailed carving in the sandstone plus you can see the twenty-four foot tall iron pillar made in the 4th or 5th century and still rust free, so good was their iron-making skills.

The last photo is a closer shot of a couple of the buildings, all originally made or covered using red sandstone and white marble.