Photo of the day: the mosque at Fatehpur Sikri
On the train a man came round and took our orders for dinner, which was brought on board at Jodhpur. The Doctor chatted to our fellow passengers who were experts in alternative medicine and who gave me an ayurvedic pill for my cough – not sure how well it worked but in the end I slept quite well. After 5am we got to Jaipur and luckily got off at the right station – I had been worried about missing our stop and ending up miles away. Our driver was waiting for us there, along with hundreds of travellers, even though it was way before dawn. He took us to our earlier hotel where we spent a few hours having a proper sleep and breakfast.
We drove east from Jaipur on a cooler day than we were used to (still short sleeves weather). At lunchtime we vetoed our drivers' choice of restaurant which was expensive and fairly characterless, and went instead to another place just down the road where we had an excellent dosa in a more friendly environment, with Indian families eating there as well.
Fatehpur Sikri is about 50km west of Agra and we spent a couple of hours there in the afternoon. It was built as the capital city by the Emperor Akbar in the 16th century. He lived there for just 14 years, before abandoning the city and moving to Lahore. Because it was quickly abandoned, it was extremely well preserved and very impressive to walk around – it was very easy to see what the buildings had been used for and to appreciate the scale of the city. The book had warned of too many tourists, but it was relatively quiet and pleasant to walk around (although there were lots of people offering themselves as guides and the mosque had quite a lot of hassle factor from young hawkers).
The Emperor clearly was making a statement as he built the city – there was lots of architecture there to show his power and importance, so for example he would have the highest position in a building in a kiosk – and it is possible that he was setting himself up in a semi-divine position, for example by having people facing him in the same direction as Mecca.
We walked around the abandoned city and then went into the nearby mosque. I had never been in a mosque before – this was huge and without a roof, although walled and with shrines and tombs inside. We were very impressed with the scale of the place and the architecture was dominated by strong straight lines.
We headed back through the city and took an auto-rickshaw (my first time in one) back to the car park, where we joined our driver again and headed for Agra. Night was falling and we went through crowded streets with cars, bikes, motorbikes, cycle and auto-rickshaws all trying to push in front. We got to our destination – a home stay in Agra – had a pleasant veggie curry dinner there before going to catch up with more sleep.
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