Day Eight in India - Fatepur Sikri and the train to Delhi

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Day 8 13/01/12
We get the tuktuk to the bus station and jump straight on the bus to Fatephur Sikri. It costs just 27Rs. The bus has seen better days but its comfortable enough and it gets us there without breaking down. Neither of us has any idea where to get off but we figure we just get off when the rest of the non-Indians do. We pass through the Indian countryside but the waste and decay of the Indian cities follows us here. All along the road there are signs of Indian culture. Westernised advertising with charming spelling mistakes and misinterpretations. Rubbish strewn along the sides of the road. Decaying buildings serving as shelters for the homeless. We arrive at Fatepur Sikri via a huge red stone archway and enter into a crazy, bustling village. We are dropped at the far end of the market street so we walk a short way to the entrance of the mosque. Outside are numerous tourists and touts intermingled. We manage to deflect the attention of most but upon entering Ben is hooked. A man claiming not to be a tour guide but a member of staff says that he asks for no money. I try to politely get rid of him but Ben naively wanders after him. I walk around talking pictures and bump into Ben later having been sold a carved marble elephant that he never wanted and in the midst of being convinced to make further purchases from the man who says he worked here. After a struggle I manage to get away but he very nearly reeled me in too! Even as we walk away the man is following me with arms full of carved creations. He becomes more and more aggressive in his sales technique but we eventually lose him. However, by this point I have attracted the attentions of a young tour guide named Dannes who is just ten years old, has never been to school but speaks six different languages. He is polite and helpful and so I decide he can tag along and I will give him a little something for his time. He asks only for the ticket stub from my entry into the palace her and for Agra fort if I have it. He says he can sell them for around 50Rs but I tell him I don't want to part with them as I wish to create a book when I get back home. He seems to understand but still he asks if I can give him the ticket. After suffering fairly severe temple fatigue both Ben and I are ready to leave. Dannes waits patiently outside for our tickets but I reiterate my wish to keep it and give him 50Rs instead, with which he seems genuinely disappointed. I am so confused. He asks if i will swap my nice new, flat ticket for one that he has that is all bent up. I say no, I want to keep my ticket and he walks away dejected but 50Rs better off. Still, I feel terrible! I call him back and swap tickets, I figure it will be a more interesting memory this way. His face is illuminated!! We go our each separate ways, pleased with the encounter. I get back to the guesthouse with just enough time to work out where I am headed next. I finally decide that I am not prepared enough for the cold of Dharamsala and so I go on to Pushkar after Delhi. I have just enough time to book my next train to Ajmer which is the following morning at 4.30am. I get to Agra train station and find that it is the worst place so far for staring which I find so strange given that it is probably the biggest tourist destination in all of India. I hook up with an English couple sitting on the platform and chat with them whilst we wait for the train together. We are hounded by children asking for food and each feel terrible when we can give them nothing. We talk about how we deal with the poverty on India, especially when it comes to the children. I feel that I have grown a heart of stone in India as I put on the blinkers when I see them but I think and hope that this just a coping mechanism. If it got to you every time you would literally go through India in floods of tears as the are so many in need. I arrived into Nizamuddin and get a tuktuk to New Delhi where I have been recommended to stay in the Hotel Vivek. I book a night but stay for just a few hours. I watch TV and gain some peace from the hectic streets of Delhi. I dont bother to sleep as I will have to get up again at 2.30am to catch a taxi to Old Delhi train station. Day 9 14/01/12 There is a sweet man at the hotel who brings me a hot masala chai first thing and helps me to my taxi. It's icy cold this morning and the streets of Delhi have a thick freezing mist hanging over the ground. There are few people awake on the streets but so many sleeping, under thin blankets on the sides of the roads. It brings me to sadness. I arrive at the station I try to get a hot drink from a cafe called 'Continental' but the counter assistant won't serve me. He kept saying that the machine wasnt working. It was. I was so cold and really very tempted to use my recently acquired Hindi swear word but managed to refrain and instead went to the cafe outside who gladly gave my a hot chai. I proudly paraded passed the idiot at the Continental as I wandered over to my platform. I was travelling first class but there's not much difference between this and AC2, just a few more inches on the width of the bed. Arrived in Ajmer around 1pm and was instantly hounded outside the train station by rickshaw drivers shouting 'Pushkar bus stand, pushkar bus stand' at me. '3km, Pushkar bus stand'. The clerk at the enquiries office inside the train station had told me that I should just have to cross the road and catch the bus from beneath the clock tower so I assumed the rickshaw drivers were merely exaggerating the distance to gain some business. And so, in my best high and mighty, know it all strut I pass right by all the rickshaw drivers and wait on the other side of the road. I wait. And I wait. I ask a few bus drivers if they're going to Pushkar but each shakes his head and waves a hand vaguely in front of him. I wait a little time longer until a man approaches me to say that I am in the wrong place so I start walking in the direction of the numerous vague hand gestures. My bags grow heavier and heavier with every step and the straps started cutting into my shoulders. I look to jump into a rickshaw but find the street is one way, the wrong way so I continue to walk. I walked for about 3km in and finally arrived hot, sticky and in pain only to find that I could have hopped on the rickshaw from the train station for 5Rs (about 6p). Doh! I did meet a very nice street dentist along the way who sat up against a red brick wall on his three legged stool with his array of false teeth all dirty and coated in grime and laid out next to a variety of interesting looking creams, liquids and powders. I wandered up to the empty bus but was told that I could not board without a ticket. After waiting ages in the queue I had had enough of the locals pushing in ahead of me, my bags weighing me down and the man behind the counter who had seemingly gone to lunch. I just got on the bus which was now, of course, full. I was, however, welcomed to squeeze in with a large Indian family at the back who made some room for me to sit by juggling their children around. The girls chuckled as I struggled to get my bag off and almost took out one of them as it swung around. Got to Pushkar and to the Akash Hotel, loved it immediately. The staff are great, John doesn't say much but Deepak is very friendly. Met his fiancée Eva from Germany after assuming she was a tourist here. They were flying kites on the roof as today is the kite festival. I wandered through the market and bought a number of things. Could easily have bought so much more but could not fit it in my bags. This place reminds me so much of Gastonbury Festival, it feels so familiar. There is such an array of coloured clothes, bags, jewellery, ornaments etc that you could spend hours walking through the markets and could easily spend a lot of money. Maybe I will buy another bag. Watched the sun set over Pushkar lake at the sunset cafe. Ate well then headed back to get an early night. Slept well.

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