Abandoned Cities

Thursday 10th April

- Fatehpur Sikri
- Akbar's mausoleum - Sikandra
- leaving Agra, arriving in Jaipur.

at Fatehpur Sikri- more below!

off to Fatehpur Sikri today, the abandoned capital city of Akbar the Great. this involved yet another dawn start, but we knew that the midday and early afternoon sun was too strong to spend strolling around in with no cover. over our 7am breakfast, Colonel Lamba spoke of the langur monkeys we had seen in Agra and warned us to keep out distance from them. in the same way that Trafalgar Square brought in hawks to keep down the pigeon population, he had once had to buy a langur (R5000) to scare off the 'monkey menace' cause by other, troublesome monkeys that were interfering with cables and the like. langurs don't tolerate other species it seems and will attack them, or at least chase them off.

Fatehpur Sikri is 40km outside Agra, so we had hired a taxi through the Colonel for a reasonably hefty sum - getting a rickshaw there and back was not possible. the Colonel had let us rent our room for half a day extra to allow us some crash time before our 5:40pm train to Jaipur. the taxi driver was the same smiling man who had picked us up from Agra Cantt on Monday. as well as not speaking directly to Philippa ever, he only ever opened doors for me and never for her. he wasn't being rude, just being an Indian man.

our journey juddered to a halt barely after it had begun. a flat tire and a dead spare led to the wonderful sight of our driver disappearing down the road in a cycle rickshaw with a wheel. in the meantime, we spoke at length and with interest to the owners of a carpet making shop, replete with looms loaded with threads being had knotted and cut by workers whose digits fairly flew at least once a second through a process that Philippa said would have taken a her a great deal longer to achieve.


we could do nothing about the time we were losing, so there was no point in wasting energy worrying about it - far better to drink the tea offered and talk carpets and the meditative qualities of the making process with one of the Muslim staff, a man so balanced and relaxed about the world that it was impossible not to be struck by his apparent inner peace.

wheel and driver returned, we were off again. the hour drive to Fatehpur Sikri was, as ever, an experience in itself. imminent head on collisions appeared with high regularity. buffalo wallowed in roadside pools, whole herds cooling off from the strengthening sun. a tusked sow or pig ran under carts balancing perfect pyramids of oranges, sweet limes and other fruit in a dust-choked roadside market. we saw multiple Beverly Hillbillies-style trucks with no cab or engine cover puttering down the dead straight road, heaving with people or laden with massive loads, and sometimes both. giant Mugha, mileposts several metres high and round suggested that the highway ran on an ancient thoroughfare, Roman-road fashion. the half-completed construction of a dual carriageway on our route heralded faster journeys for its myriad trucks, all decked out like rolling shrines with painted symbols and tinsel streamers, but what effect would it have on the sights we were about to see?

arriving in Fatehpur Sikri over an hour later than planned, we 'had' to get a rickshaw the pitiful one kilometre journey to the ancient city itself. it was very strange to be virtually the only people there when we arrived, small among the bare red sandstone temples and structures of this ancient Mughal folly.


Akbar had decided to move the capital from Agra, mainly to be near Muslim divine Sheikh Salim Christi, but also to found his new capital based on freedom of religion and a confluence of Islamic and Hindu faiths, architecture and beliefs - pretty radical for the time, and all-inclusive approach to society. military campaign demands made him move to Lahore less than 20 years later, and he never came back, eventually deciding that he liked Agra after all. still, the fact that the two most extensive structures in the city are his harem palaces and a giant pachisi board indicate that he enjoyed himself enough while he was there. with 300 wives and, er 5,000 concubines, keeping everyone happy must have been more difficult than running his empire. he is said to have had one game of pachisi on his giant courtyard, using dancing girls as pieces, for three months, no doubt testing how badly his senior subjects wanted things from him, since they weren't allowed to leave until he finished.




the architecture is a fascinating clash of styles and unlike any of the places we have seen so far. Islamic arches, Hindu images, Jain carvings - Akbar seems to have been a remarkably forward-thinking ruler, in some respects at least.

the Philosopher's Seat, Fatehpur Sikri

this Throne Pillar room, a real eye catcher where he would literally look, down on his ministerial-level subjects from a crossed walkway above to discuss matters of state, is a fine combination of sturdiness and beauty, authority and artistic freedom.

the Throne Pillar room, Fatehpur Sikri

the Panch Mahal is a five-story palace building, rising in stepped levels and dominating the city. even Akbar's bed is a chunky, hugely oversized red sandstone slab on a raised level, while innumerable libraries, palaces, treasuries and pillared walkways - many of them covered in really exquisite carvings made in the red sandstone, of a type we had not seen before - were indicative of a ruler and designer with an eye for craft and a desire for statement.

Akbar's pachisi board - the little stone seat on the left is where he sat.
on the right, the Panch Mahal.

carving detail and Philippa, Fatehpur Sikri

almost two hours passed before we exited the city from the opposite end to where we entered and had a look around the highly impressive and undoubtedly enormous Jami Masjid, said by our guidebooks to be one of the finest mosques in India, and we would struggle to disagree.


Akbar started work on the mosque before his palace and it now contains the shrine of his favourite Muslim holy man, Sheikh Salim Christi, which lies within its huge, open inner courtyard. even the mosque has many decidedly un-Islamic touches, as well as a collection of massive beehives suspended precariously from its blue and gold ceilinged entrance gate.

the Sheikh's shrine is a delicate, white marble-faced, ornate creation in one corner, an ivory jewellery box dropped into the centre of the bustling mosque.


indeed, unlike the city, there were hundreds of people everywhere, not least because the shrine is still a very active site of pilgrimage. people were praying within its extraordinarily intricate marble lattice screens, which we toured (as well as the mosque) with a self-appointed guide we had been unable to shake off.

inside the shrine, Philippa stands in front of the carved marble lattice screens

women tied wool into the inner screens to bring them fertility and a son, while within the shrine itself, the very faithful were involved in some serious praying and devotion, an atmosphere thick with incense, prayer and unshakeable faith; a remarkable place.

we bought some drinks afterwards and Phil in particular instigated her stand firm policy on rip-off prices, as the seller knowingly tried to overcharge is (food and drink is never haggled, and all drinks have their prices stamped on them). by now the sun was extremely hot and our Agra-bound return journey was a sweltering affair, only annotated by our second and apparently successful stop of the day to confirm our Jaipur room booking by STD phone call.

time was now against us and the sun definitely so, but after some prevarication we decided to go to Akbar's Agra mausoleum at Sikandra, North of the city, for quick look. it's a curious mishmash of styles, completed to a design he did not specify and then also changed half way through construction. domeless, it looks exactly as if someone had placed the small white intricacy of Itmad-ud-Daulah on top of the red sandstone kiosks of Fatehpur Sikri.

Akbar's mausoleum, Sikandra

inside, his tomb is a real surprise; a simple, unadorned chamber with one light source, approached via a dark passageway, almost pyramid style. one wonders what this divine ruler would have thought of the lack of adornment and if he would have approved.

we took a brief constitutional through its charbagh gardens, filled today as when it was constructed by herds of deer. the most impressive part of the site is probably its domed Great Gate; with four minarets, it is in many ways more impactful than the tomb itself.


our taxi home was an extended crawl through Agra in a hot car and mired in heavy, polluting traffic under an unforgiving sun. despite our planned afternoon, we ended up with just enough time to shower, pack and grab a few moments before saying a genuinely fond farewell to the Colonel and his wife before leaving Agra by the same taxi on an 'express' train, a speedy transport in name only but enlivened by the constant cries of chai-wallahs walking up and down the aisles. at times, we travelled at a degree of velocity, but the rails seemed to be studded with bumps. the 2nd class AC carriage we were in was not even half full, while the next carriage heaved with people and had no such luxury as AC. our seats cost the equivalent of less than 3.50 pounds each.

arrival in Jaipur was a surprise; heavy heat laced with a strong perfume of jasmine, very different from the parched, dry wind of Agra we had only just left, although it was almost 11pm. we had hardly stepped off the train when we were greeted on the platform by an animated and very tall rickshaw driver. although we were very wary at first, he did at least provide a pathway through the scrum of clamouring drivers at the station's entrance. to our surprise, he then proceeded to quote us a very fair price indeed to take us to our new home, the Diggi Palace, while showing us a book of recommendations from his other, very satisfied Western customers. this was the polar opposite of the scam-heavy city we had both read about, so i guess we got lucky with 'James,' our new Punjabi beanpole best friend.

he woke the staff up at the entrance to our hotel with hooting and we were led straight to our room, as it was too late to check in properly. even in the dimly lit night, Edd was sure we were in the wrong place - everything seemed rather grand and impressive. our room was well kept and with the most modern AC we had so far enjoyed and - save for a few minutes of cathartic mosquito killing and a life-saving shower - it was not long before we were both fast asleep.

we hear it's snowing in England - that's unimaginable here.

everything is OK with us, hope it is with you.

edd & philippa