Chasing Monuments

I’ve always had a fascination with architecture, especially uniquely constructed buildings. My earliest memories are linked to Crystal Palace Park, where we lived opposite. I spent many happy hours there, both in awe of and slightly afraid of the huge stone dinosaurs (I was only five or six at the time). I’d wander around the boating lake and watch the bigger kids from a distance in the adventure playground that was off limits to me at that age.

The park was an incredible place to spend time, but it was the absence of the Crystal Palace itself that often captured my imagination. I would wonder what a beautiful building it must have been. Constructed of cast iron and plate glass, it stood at the top of Penge Peak next to Sydenham Hill in London, hosting exhibitions and events from 1854 until its destruction by a devastating fire in 1936. The Palace boasted the greatest area of glass ever seen in a building and astonished visitors with its high clear walls and vast ceilings. The magic of the place was not lost on me. My imagination would run wild at night, fuelled by the many books I devoured in my spare time.

Over the years, castles, churches and modern architecture continued to fascinate me. While my friends traded football stickers, I was often seen with a camera, capturing manmade structures and collecting the photographs into albums. Eventually, though, I stepped away from photography and lost interest in architecture during my late teens and early twenties – until the day I set foot in India. Suddenly, everything in England seemed dull by comparison, and my mind was blown away by what appeared around every corner.

I had just turned twenty-four and had come out of a drawn-out disaster of a relationship. I was drifting between dead-end jobs and generally feeling fed up. On a whim, I arrived in New Delhi with a friend and no real plan, which in hindsight was probably a little reckless. The city hit us from every direction with its intensity. I studied the Rough Guide we shared and became fascinated by the descriptions of Delhi’s landmarks. While my friend grew increasingly bored of wandering around temples, mosques and forts, I was enthralled. My curiosity felt endless.

When we eventually parted ways, I had little idea what to do next. Fate, friends and strangers I met along the way helped guide my journey, but it was when I got my hands on a Lonely Planet that real pathways began to open. Often alone in my hotel rooms, I would spend hours leafing through page after page discovering incredible places: the Palace of Winds, the Kailasa rock-cut temple, the strange stone landscape of Hampi. That old sense of wonder returned. I would picture these mystical places until sleep finally overtook me.

I would arrive in a town having researched the places I wanted to see, then spend hours getting lost or taking hair-raising rickshaw rides to find them. Not once was I disappointed by what appeared before me. My time around India soon became shaped by these extraordinary monuments. They were intricately detailed, alive with history and unlike anything I had ever seen. Built to impress anyone who laid eyes on them, the stories behind them were just as captivating.

My knowledge at the time was limited to the few paragraphs in guidebooks, but once I returned to England, I began studying their histories in depth, desperate to understand more and hoping one day to return and see them again with new eyes. To this day I still have a keen interest in Indian history, and my home library is now seventy percent books that lead me down endless paths into the past.

My favourite era is the age of the great Mughals, due largely to their breathtaking architecture: the domed Jama Masjids, the great sandstone forts, the funerary complexes and mausoleums such as Humayun’s Tomb and the Taj Mahal. Even now, the Taj remains the most impressive building I have ever seen. Somehow, it always takes me back to my childhood and the sense of wonder I felt imagining the Crystal Palace.

While writing Towards the Within, I tried my best to capture what I experienced on that first journey through India. It was not easy. I wanted to bring the reader along with me, to see what I saw. But nothing can truly prepare you for the moment you first stand before the Taj Mahal, the Qutab Minar, or the countless other wonders waiting for an unsuspecting traveller.

The world is full of magnificent structures, and I remain in awe not only of natural landscapes, but of what human imagination has created. Until the day I die, I will keep researching new places and discovering which monument I can chase next.

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Towards The Within is available now at Amazon