Fatehpur Sikri

I fly home tomorrow and am sitting in a $15.00 hotel near the Indira Gandhi airport in Delhi , killing time.  I did not waste the whole day, as I took a tuk-tuk to Humayun's Tomb and Nizzumaddin in town this morning, to be discussed later.  I need to catch up and get back to India/Jaipur which I never documented before Varanasi and Bodhgaya, in an attempt to keep this blog in a partially chronological sequence.  Nepal will come after this.

About 40 Km out of Agra, on the way to Jaipur, is the World Heritage site of Fatehpur Sikri.  The story goes that Akbar consulted a holy man who lived in the hills about a son who would be heir to the throne.  The holy man predicted that a son would be born.  When Akbar's Hindu wife (he had a Hindu, a Christian, and a Muslim wife) delivered a son, he decided that hilltop should be the site of his capital.  So, the enormous complex/fort/palace and a mosque to commemorate the holy man, were built around 1570, and the site was the capital of the Mughal empire until 1585.

I have photos of the palace, but I think I was so put off by the hawkers and pious people at the mosque and tomb of the holy man, that I did not take any pictures of these two ornate structures.

These antelope type creatures were way off the road...

 

 

 

The royal platform bed...



 

Off the grid

Kathmandu seems much more orderly than any city in India.  Drivers are more courteous, streets are cleaner, not so much honking.  No cows, no stray dogs.  Maybe it's just the crowding down there, or maybe it's the altitude up here.  The train from Bodh Gaya was going to be 8 hours late, getting me to Varanasi at 4-5am, with a 12:00 flight to Kathmandu.  I could not do it, so I had the IRCTC (Indian National Railway) travel office in Gaya Junction hire a car to drive me back the 300Km to my hotel on the Ganges.  Scary, miserable drive in the dark, with me speaking no Hindi, and the young driver speaking no English.  The highway is the main road from Delhi to Calcutta, but it was in such disrepair or being redone, or something, that often 30mph was all that was possible. That was good sometimes, because the huge trucks and farm tractors, bicycles and auto-rickshaws that are also on the road have no tail lights, so when we did get to 50/60mph, it made me think I was not long for this world.  Anyway, the trek begins tomorrow at 6am with a 6 hour drive to a town where we will rest and begin walking the next morning.  I wanted to upload some images from Bodh Gaya before I lost all contact with the digital world.

The banyan tree where Sujata met the emaciated acetic and offered him sweet milk rice...

Villages on the way to the cave...

Siddhartha walked this path and crossed the riverbed...

Around the cave..

'neath the Bo Tree

I finally made it to this high point of this half of the trip.  I sat beneath the Bo Tree, contemplated the meaning of life and enlightenment, and marveled at the devotion shown by the monks, nuns, and lay pilgrims from many countries (mostly SE Asia, but including Tibet, Korea, and China), as they performed their ablutions, chanted, meditated, circled the Mahabodhi temple and the Bodhi tree.  All around the temple, which was built about 250 years after Buddha discovered the true path, but forgotten and buried until the late 19th century, are other smaller structures, maybe graves, among which are multi-colored sleeping mats, tents, plank platforms for performing the kneeling to prostration and back up movement, where the followers, organized followers, not wanderers with dreadlocks and backpacks, are spending the nights.  The various groups of pilgrims gather at various points around the temple and are led through mantra or sutra recitation exercises by monks, often with rhythm kept by a bell or wooden fish.

Note:  I am lucky enough to be in a hotel with a mosque nearby, so I am hearing the call to prayer right now.

I sat on the sidelines (about 3 feet from the group of pilgrims chanting, with enough sidewalk for those circling the temple to pass).  You cannot circle the temple without also circling the tree, there is no passage between the tree and the building.  My feet were bare, and I was a bit embarrassed by my bed bug bite spotted feet and ankles, but the rhythm of the chanting led me into a state of quiet, forgetful comfort.  After an hour, I went back outside the grounds and bought some prayer beads and began circling with the others. 

Most monks are in maroon robes, but some are in orange or beige, and most with shaved heads.  There were monks and lay pilgrims performing the kneeling to prostration exercise on the sides of the building, facing it,  and others as they circled the building, counting one bead for each action.  Some of these people were very old and their resolve (and ability) to perform that move at their age was astonishing. 

After a long, cold, and cramped train ride (sleeper class (low)) from Varanasi, which dropped me here at about 1:30am, I could not get the name of my reserved hotel right, and my auto-rickshaw driver was not really helpful, so he dropped me at a place where he could get part of the action, a real dive.  It only cost Rs500, about $4USD, and was worth no more.  But the guy at the desk said, "My friend come in the morning, show you all the places."  I was not sure I wanted another guided tour, but the kid who showed up at 9am, with a new motorcycle and very good English, took me on a great ride through the countryside, small villages, across a dry riverbed, to one of the Mahakala caves where Buddha is said to have spent six years in self-mortification, fasting and meditating. It is a popular pilgrim/tourist spot, so the ramp up is lined with people asking for something.  My driver suggested the more challenging, rough steps which I took, and avoided most of the hungry eyes. 

The cave/temple, surrounding prayer flag cornucopia, and view of the lower countryside made me grateful to have bumped into this guy.  I would not have even known about this site, otherwise.  The cave plaque on the outside (it is just a tiny, dark opening in the side of a mountain, about 9 feet deep, 5 feet wide, and 5 feet tall) called it Buddha's Rain Retreat.  I suppose he took sun during the dry seasons, and hung out in the cave during monsoon. 

As the story goes, for those six years that he occupied this mountain cave, he would eat only six grains of rice each day, and came close to dying.   At the end of this period, a woman named Sujata met him under a banyan tree near her village and offered him some milk rice (pudding).  He decided the milk rice was better than starvation and that extreme asceticism was not the way to find Nirvana. 

We also visited the village where Sujata lived, and the temple there, devoted to her, and the banyan tree where she encountered him that day.

Since I came by rail and did not want to lug the suitcase, I just brought a light backpack and left my plastic bag of cables, converters, etc., in the hotel in Varanasi.  I will upload some beautiful pictures and videos of this part of the trip tomorrow.

Looking up into the Bodhi tree