A few weeks ago I realized I was at my last free weekend before volleyball started. Despite limping around with a cast on my foot I was determined to take advantage of time that would soon be in short supply. So I decided to take a trip to one of the main sites in Delhi which, despite it being the beginning of my third year, I had never visited...the Qutb Minar. On a bustling street corner, after crossing the road three times (turns out the ticket office is on the opposite side of the road from the monument itself) we entered into a green space whose main focus had my neck cricked back so I could stare into the sky. This sandstone column rises 72.5 meters (238 feet) into the air and is the highest stone tower in India. It was constructed as a huge minaret in the courtyard of the Quwwatu'l-Islam mosque which dates from 1198 and was pieced together using fragments of demolished Hindu temples giving an unusual design of stone work in a mosque. The Qutb Minar itself was begun in 1202 and continued to be added on to and renovated until 1503. In addition to this massive tower and the remains of the mosque there are numerous tombs on the grounds, a madrasa, an unusual iron pillar with a Sanskrit inscription (which may attribute its pristine state in part to being regularly covered in ghee in its past), and the rubble of the beginnings of a second enormous minaret which never got very far off the ground.
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