Mughal Bridge (Sarai Khwaja, Old Grand Trunk Road)

Most travellers speed past the Mughal Bridge without a second glance, funnelled south from Delhi on the roaring Mathura Road toward Faridabad. Yet just east of the modern carriageway at Sarai Khwaja, half-swallowed by scrub and traffic, stands one of the oldest surviving pieces of infrastructure in the entire Delhi–Agra corridor: a low, three-arched masonry bridge that once carried the imperial Grand Trunk Road over the Budhiya Wala nala.

• It is not grand in the way the Qutub or Humayun's Tomb are grand.
• Its appeal is quieter and more archaeological — the pleasure of standing on a road surface that Mughal caravans, pilgrims and post-riders actually used.
• The structure is built of coursed rubble bonded with lime mortar and finished in lime plaster, the workaday technique of Mughal roadworks rather than the dressed sandstone of a palace.
• Three four-centred (pointed) arches span the seasonal drain, braced by heavy buttresses at the central pier, and older descriptions record a pair of slim minaret-like turrets with fluted shafts and small domed caps flanking the middle arch — a decorative flourish that marked the crossing for approaching travellers.
• Dating is genuinely uncertain: Haryana Tourism lists it broadly as circa 16th century, while a textual tradition ties its patronage to the later 17th century.
• Treat any single year with caution; what is certain is that it belongs to the Mughal period and to the sarai-and-bridge system that made long-distance travel possible.
• The setting explains the name Sarai Khwaja — a 'sarai' was a walled roadside inn where caravans halted for the night, and a bridge like this stitched the road across the ravine beside it.
• This is the same logic that founded Faridabad itself in 1607, when Sheikh Farid, treasurer to the emperor Jahangir, established a town here specifically to guard and service the Delhi–Agra highway.
• The bridge is a tangible offcut of that story, and it sits so close to the capital's edge — near the Badarpur border — that it feels more like a forgotten Delhi monument than a Faridabad one.
• For the vegetarian traveller this is a short, unfussy stop with no food on site, so plan meals separately.
• The reliable pure-vegetarian, egg-free options lie south into Faridabad proper: Haldiram's in Sector 21C for thalis, chaat and sweets, and Bikanervala at Bata Chowk or Sector 82 for North Indian veg meals and mithai.
• Carry your own water, because the nala-side surroundings are dusty and there is no vendor you would want to rely on right at the bridge.
• Come for twenty to forty minutes, ideally in soft morning or late-afternoon light, treat it as a heritage curiosity folded into a Surajkund or Tughlaqabad day, and you will have touched a genuinely old thread of the road between two Mughal capitals.