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Fatehpur Sikri, India
March 8 would be a day to remember.
Agra, 124 miles southeast of Delhi, has long been
renowned as the city of the Taj Mahal.
Not even Delhi, the seat of kings and emperors for
over a thousand years, can boast the heritage of architectural and
cultural splendors that Agra received from the golden age of India’s
Mogul emperors in the 16th and 17th centuries.
From the mid-1500’s to 1700’s, under the rule of
the great Mogul emperors, gardens,
marble mosques, pavilions, rose red palaces, towering
ramparts, and entire cities were created in Agra—often
embellished by gem-inlaid white marble.
But we didn’t see any of this as we left our Agra
hotel early the morning of March 8.
We saw instead a crowded dirty city, filled with sacred cows,
throngs of homeless working class people, and gridlocked highways and
dusty roads. These were our first views of the city of the Taj Mahal.
Later in the day, however, our impressions of Agra would be
permanently imprinted with
two vastly different other sights--the memorable Taj Mahal and the almost
equally extraordinary Agra Fort.
But first we were to visit Fatehpur Sikri.
We weren’t too enthusiastic about this sidebar visit.
As we bounced along the rough road out of town, we wondered aloud
why we were wasting our precious Taj Mahal time
driving to nowhere to see some minor Indian ruins.
How wrong we were.
Fatehpur Sikri,
an Emperor’s dream city, now lies as a magnificent phantom city standing high on a ridge 23 miles southwest of
Agra. For sixteen years in
the sixteenth century it was the wonder of travelers who visited from all
over the world.
The creation of this city reads like a fairy tale.
In the 16th century, the story goes, the Mogul Emperor
Akbar was blessed with male heir. To
honor him, Akbar built a new capital in 1571 to honor the saint who had
provided him this heir. So,
Fatehpur Sikri, a new city arose from the dust.
Originally seven miles in circumference, with three sides enclosed
by massive walls and the fourth protected by a lake, the city presented a
fabulous kingdom of citadels, walls, palaces,
beautiful baths, courts, gardens and a royal mint. Walking through
its many terraces, pavilions, decorative
doorways, balconies, platforms
and passageways that day, we were entranced by this deserted city of which
none of us had ever heard.
After a visit of several hours, we paused in the
heart of the palace complex to visit the tomb of Salim Chisti, which women
from all over India make a pilgrimage to in hopes of bearing a son. As we were strolling over a terrace leading to a final exit,
an unexpected accident occurred; immediately it cast a temporary pall over
our pleasant excursion to this impressive restored ruins.
A member of our group, doing what we all had been
doing throughout this visit—was gazing up high at the walls of the next
pavilion as she neared the edge of the terrace.
A drop of almost three feet was ahead. She did not see the drop and
stepped right off the terrace, falling onto the hard inlaid brick surface
below. There was a terrible
sound when she fell to the ground on her side, and at first we thought she
was critically injured. Soon however, we saw that she was conscious and
had suffered many bruises but had injured primarily her leg and broken her
ankle. A wheelchair carried her out to return her to Agra and we
were relieved that she would accompany us back to Delhi and then the ship
the next day. A fairly happy
ending to what could have been a terrible tragedy.
The Taj Mahal would be our next and final stop.
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