My learnings from #DelhibyMetro Walks

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This year, the walks matured as we focussed on the truly wise citizens of our city – the below 15 year olds. While adults are welcome, as our target group needs chaperons (just joking, we love adults too), #DelhibyMetro tried to get more and more young children to come out and observe. Here are some things I learnt, from our young walkers, as they truly explored the city they call home.

1.       Safdarjung Tomb walk- There is always a tree to climb. Whichever historic monument we ever went to, the young walkers found a tree and made their way to the top of it. There is only so much about old kings and queens that you can listen to.

2.       Chor Minar walk- Macabre stories of gore and graves, are very welcome. All kids were thrilled with the idea of gutted heads on spikes. We were also able to partially hold their attention when graves- male vs female, were discussed.

3.       Rose Garden walk -Any animal, even pigs, are great fun. While I laboriously tried to explain the many advantages of different kinds of trees, a young walker screamed with delight when he saw a pig. We spent the rest of the walk following Ms Pig and (much to the walker’s delight) her three piglets, all over Rose Garden.
4.       Fruit bat walk- bats are argumentative. Children observe cooler stuff than adults. While we made painstaking notes on colour, wingspan and other boring details, a young walker was very amused at how much the bats fought. Their screechy nature seems to have impressed all the young walkers.

5.       Lodi Art District, South Ridge Walk – everyone is happy to pose. Sometimes, we didn’t see birds on our bird walks. So we posed as birds. And even when we did see a lot of street art, we posed like crazies. We even photobombed a wedding shoot.


6.       Agrasen ki baoli walk- monuments make us sing. When you are sitting at a gorgeous monument, on a winter afternoon, you’ve got to sing. Or at least clap.


We didn’t have strict formats for our walks. We tried to keep our eyes and ears open and stopped to admire a pretty flower on a history walk, and a roadside monument on a nature walk. 
As I look back, I realise that walkers probably didn’t go back with truckloads of ‘knowledge’, laden with deep information about our city (That’s what Google’s for). But hopefully they went back with a little more appreciation and pride in our smog-ridden, much maligned Dilli sheher. 



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