Going to Hauz Khas village was one of the things I was really looking forward to on my Delhi trip. Luckily it wasn’t far from Apartment 18. I was definitely more interested in Hauz Khas village, for all the cutesy & quirky cafés & shops, but the rickshaw guy dropped us right near the entrance of Deer Park so we decided to take a stroll there.

The entry is free, just when you enter the gate you see a sign pointing to the lake with ducks (the lake is actually the revived Hauz Khas royal tank, dating back to the Mughal period) & a little forward the sign pointing to the deer park. All of the signs are in Hindi, so even I took a little time to read them. The park is very green & pretty clean too. The pathways are well paved & nice to walk on.

Many people go there to jog, but we also saw some suspicious looking couples & suspicious looking groups of men, & so keeping in mind that it’s Delhi & we were just two women (dad stayed home that day) we avoided the very lonely looking paths.

This sign says Hiran Park, which literally means Deer Park.
When we entered the lane that was supposed to be a deer park, we were sad to see an enclosure with piles of deer feed & water containers, but not a single deer in sight. Had they migrated somewhere deep into the enclosure, away from prying eyes?
Anyway we kept walking & right away turning a bend (& encountering a very creepy old man), there they were!
This was one especially curious, she came right near the mesh so we could easily touch her (but we didn’t).

An Indian palm squirrel (thanks you for the corrections, friends!)
 
The amount of foliage in the deer park meant there were a lot of squirrels as well as rarer birds. One thing I have to say about Delhi in general, though is that there were many chipmunks, even in the more metropolitan areas.

Part of Hauz Khas complex
Then we went to the Hauz Khas complex which houses an Islamic seminary, a mosque, a tomb and pavilions built around an urbanized village with medieval history traced to the 13th century of Delhi Sultanate reign. It was part of Siri, the second medieval city of India of the Delhi Sultanate of Allauddin Khilji Dynasty (1296–1316).
The monuments are in pretty good shape, but it’s disappointing to see a drab modern residential complex just meters away from the wall.

In my next posts you’ll see some lovely places I visited in Hauz Khas village.