Jama Masjid, Faulty Towers and Maggots
Trip Start
Feb 16, 2007
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13
15
Trip End
Mar 18, 2007
Fatepur Sikri, India
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Fatepur Sikri was one of the dirtiest towns I visited with the least choice of hotels. I always find it amazing how the Indians just throw their litter anywhere. In some cases it works out well as with food bowls that are made out of some type of leaves and the cows roaming the street just come and gobble them up. But now they are using so much plastic over there it creates a real mess.
The food at Sunset View was a different story. For a start there were flies everywhere. I had a pancake, but the Israelis got a biryani. In the cauliflower was a maggot! So they put it on one side and called the waiter over, who was a young guy who didn't speak English. What follows can only be described a Basil Faulty moment. He looked at it smiled picked it up, threw it on the floor and walked off as if this was just an every day occurrence. We decided to eat somewhere else that evening!
The Israelis decided to stay in the hotel and relax for the day (well smoke some pot could be a better description), they had 2 days here. They had heard such bad things about the hassles of Agra they were going to arrive one morning see the Taj and take an overnight train out the same night. I on the other hand I only had one day so I went out to the Jama Masjid. This mosque is absolutely stupendous and not to be missed. It apparently has the largest gate leading into it out of any mosque in Asia. When stood below it, it really does just tower above you. There is a huge courtyard and a mausoleum inside that has some fantastic lattice screens and mother of pearl inside. Young kids followed me around most of the day and I had some fun with them. They all liked to call me Ali Baba (something to do with the beard I guess!). I was surprised that people were aloud to set up shop in the mosque and sell things and hassle tourists, but the entrance was free. I did buy an excellent mechanical bird made out of tin boxes that when you pressed a lever had some bellow type contraption that sucked in air and made it tweet. It was really ingenious how it had been done.
Fatepur Sikri is most famous for it's old city that was build by Akbar the Great back in the late 1500s. He was well known as a very tolerant mogul leader who came down from Afghanistan. He would listen to the views of opinions of other religions and not persecute them. As soon as he died all this stopped and his town of Fatepur Sikri was abandoned due to a lack of a regular water source. The old city was nice but, outside of the grounds you had to pay for there is also a very interesting minaret that is worth visiting and that you can climb. It was the mosque that I liked though and before long I was back in there and spend the rest of the afternoon hanging out there. As was usual in India after a while sat in the courtyard I had managed to draw quite a crowd of people.
Walking back to the hotel I met the Israelis and we all headed down to the Hotel Ajays Palace. The food here was much better than the rooms looked. I had a great thali and my first beer for 4 days since coming from the dry town of Pushkar. That evening a guy came around to our place to play the tabla, a type of drum, it was excellent to watch and all the sound is produced using quick finger and thumb movements.
