Sure you can go jogging in a park – but what if you want to broaden your exercise routine?  Well, Lodhi Gardens is not only beautiful (see pic) and well used as a park, but it has the genius idea of an outdoor gym!  Why pay lots of money to sit in a stale airconditioned room when you could be gyming among the trees?!

The Gardens are full of stunning ancient monuments, but it’s also just a big park in New Delhi with lots of people jogging, doing star jumps, having picnics and getting romantic…  There were also some toads (see pic).

Wandering past the monuments (like me) you might notice some old-school pull-up bars and parallel bars next to the bada gumbad (see pic) but stroll south for five minutes and you’ll come across a small enclave of busy (and smiling) people in a small area bordered by flowering shrubs and trees.  At half-an-hour to closing on a Tuesday night the gym was pretty busy with a range of people of a range of ages, genders and ‘sportiness’.  I didn’t have my camera and the only pic I could find is this two-person cross trainer that seem to require a rather fiendish amount of coordination.  Chest, shoulders, legs, abs are all catered for, as well as a rather confusing set of wobbling parallel bars, an ‘air walker’ treadmill and a 15kg military press.  None requiring electricity and all using own body weight as resistance.  Hackney council I hope you’re reading this…

Here’s an article here with some positive user feedback

This is the local (?)  BJP MP inaugurating that rather tricky cross-trainer mentioned above.