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.
