Exploring Delhi’s richness through heritage walks
Delhi’s history is etched within its historic monuments spanning across dynasties of Rajputs, Tughlaqs, Khiljis, Lodhis and Mughals.
The heritage walks have become a popular medium to go down the memory lane and explore the richness of the city.
A first visit to Red Fort in 2018 left IIM-Indore graduate Rameen Khan in awe. The visit left an indelible mark on Khan’s mind who decided to quit corporate life and give wings to his passion of exploring history and storytelling.
“I used to visit Delhi to explore food. But the visit to Red Fort was something I cannot forget. I spent five hours there. From 2018 to 2022, I was on solo exploration,” he says.
In 2019, Khan began documenting his visits and explorations of heritage monuments, which were scraping to survive across India on the Instagram handle, City Tales. The handle grew in popularity.
Khan received multiple suggestions from his Instagram followers to start organising heritage walks.
“The walks could not have been organised during Covid-19. So, by the end of 2022 when the pandemic waned, I decided to start organising heritage walks. Since the stories were immense it was the need of the hour to take the tales offline. With this in mind KHOJ – The Heritage Exploration series began. The first heritage walk in this series was held in Qutub Minar on December 11, 2022 with 40 people in attendance,” Khan recalls.
He says the name, Khoj, was so that the audience accompanying him could also discover the less known tales of cities.
“Much has been written about Humayun Tomb but ‘Khoj’ (discovery) of stories about Firoz Shah Tughlaq in Kotla Fort is indeed a new thing. Not many know about it. It was also a quest to find more people like me who are intellectually interested in exploring history,” Khan adds.
He says usually heritage walks in Delhi are organised for six months.
“I did not want to do it part time. If summers are a hindrance in walks I decided to organise ‘baithaks’ (a sitting session) of storytelling,” Khan says.
He says with the infusion of life into storytelling, history could be made interesting.
“A simple staccato style narration of non-cooperation might not find an audience but the moment one brings Mahatma Gandhi into the picture you will find ears. I genuinely feel there should be history labs in colleges. Students should be made to visit the monuments and genuine history should be told,” he says.
Delhi
