Walk the Bābur-nāma, Kabul to Agra
The founder of the Mughal Empire kept a diary on the march. Your everyday steps follow him from Kabul through the Khyber to Agra, and his own entries unlock where he wrote them.
- 932 miles
- 8 stops
- Babur, c. 1530
An emperor's campaign diary
Babur leaves Kabul with an army, crosses the Khyber and the Indus, and marches through the Punjab to Panipat, Delhi and Agra. His diary turns a 900-mile conquest into something stranger: weather, frozen streams, marching days, gardens and battle.
In the winter of 1525 Babur left Kabul with an army, crossed the Khyber Pass and the Indus, and marched through the Punjab. In April 1526 he won the battle of Panipat against the Sultan of Delhi, then took Delhi and Agra. It was the beginning of the Mughal Empire, and he recorded the whole march day by day.
What makes the Bābur-nāma unusual is what it notices besides the war. It records the weather, the hunting, a frozen pool that surprised a man who expected India to be hot, and gardens everywhere. Babur wrote in Turki, and Annette Susannah Beveridge's English translation keeps his voice. He gives no single distance for the campaign, so the 932 miles here are measured off the map.
- Distance
- 932 miles (1,500 km)
- Stops
- 8, each with its own passage and plate
- Map
- The real world, on Apple Maps
- Text
- Babur, translated by Annette Susannah Beveridge; Project Gutenberg ebook #44608
Where it starts
On Friday the 1st of the month of Ṣafar, the Sun being in the Sign of the Archer, we set out for Hindūstān, crossed the small rise of Yak-langa, and dismounted in the meadow to the west of the water of Dih-i-ya'qūb.
The Bābur-nāma · translated by Annette Susannah Beveridge
This is the passage Bematist gives you the moment you set out. The other 7 wait at the places they happened, and the only way to read them is to walk there.
How long would Babur's march take you?
Babur needed a winter and a spring, and a battle. You only need everyday walks. Choose when you'd like to reach Agra and Bematist sets the pace from how much you already walk.
A rough guide, at about 0.75 m a step. In the app the pace comes from your own 30-day average in Apple Health, and stays fixed for the whole journey.
On the way
The words, at the places
8 passages, each waiting where it happened. You can see how far away the next one is, but not what it says.
Walk it with friends
Send a link and walk the same road together, each of you on your own streets, wherever you live.
No streak to lose
Steps come straight from Apple Health. A quiet day is just a short one, and your place on the road only moves forward.
More roads like this one
See the whole library, with a new book every month, chosen by walkers' vote.
Set out for Agra.
932 miles of The Bābur-nāma, on the walks you already take.
- For iPhone
- No account