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Published: August 12th 2007
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Fatehpur Sikri
Main entrance, Buland Darwaza (Victory Gate) and 54m. high, to Jama Masjid in Fatehpur Sikri
My last post seems to have confused a lot of people, but that is fine, I like confusion!! This one will be more like the other ones... So this is what I have been doing and where I have been:
First I went to Fatapur Sikri which nowadays is a small village, but in the day was the capital of the Mughal Empire, that ruled India... But only for 50 years or so, it was built on the orders of Emperor Akbar the Great, but turned out to be unsustainable because it was too far from any water... So it was abandoned shortly after his death... What remain are a beautiful mosque, a grand palace and the ruins of the city walls, a caravanserai, more mosques and much more... Though it is only a short ride from Agra it is a peaceful place with few tourists... That is how easy it is to get of the tourist track in India, just half an hour away from India's biggest tourist trap, the Taj Mahal and hardly a tourist around... The village was nice, with a small but lively bazaar and in the evening it looked a bit like a fairy tale,
Fatehpur Sikri
Looking out through the gate
with a gas lamp or some candles lit in every shop due to the lack of electricity... Very nice indeed...
Mathura, Baldeo, Vrindavan and Holi!! You could call Mathura and the surrounding area, Krishna land... He is supposed to have been born on a simple slab of stone in Mathura, danced and frolicked around with milkmaids in Vrindavan and done all sorts of amazing stuff in the surrounding countryside’s... One such feat was to save a village from torrential rains by sheltering it under a mountain which he held up with one finger! Eat your heart out Superman!! This means there is abundance of temples in Mathura and Vrindavan and of course the villages around there... And it is a big pilgrimage sight for the faithful... And now to Holi... Holi is the one of the biggest festivals in northern India, marking the beginning of spring... It is also called the festival of colours and is associated with Krishna... This means that the biggest party is in Mathura... It is officially celebrated on the 4th of March, but it starts much earlier and goes on longer in the villages surrounding Mathura... Every village celebrates it on another day
Fatehpur Sikri
Tomb of Shaikh Salim Chishti inside the Mosque
and his it's own traditions concerning Krishna which is incorporated in the celebrations... In Mathura itself it is celebrated on the 4th of March... So how is it celebrated...? With lots of colours, coloured water, paint, spray paint, powder, flowers and whatever else you can think of that you might be able to throw or apply in any other way on your fellow man... If you are unfortunate enough to walk the street that day, you will be pelted from all sides, buckets from the rooftops, little kids in the alleyways prepared with water guns, big kids with hands covered in paint ready to rub it on any part of your body they can reach, old men and women with bags of coloured powder... The Indians love it... As a tourist you are a big target, so I thought I would be safe on the rooftop of my hotel... Not so, the staff and their families were ready for us unsuspecting tourists... Within 10 seconds my face and arms were green and yellow... Luckily I had been forewarned a bit and had put on old clothes and covered my hair as I had heard the colours are mostly chemical and
Fatehpur Sikri
Marble lattice screens inside the tomb
notoriously hard to wash out... (Afterwards I needed to scrub my face and body for an hour and still couldn't get everything of)... I found I looked a bit like a crazy green beret, with my orange bandana and green face, all that was missing was a necklace of ears... Anyway it starts in the morning and the climax is at around one in the afternoon, when a big crowd of people and chariots, tractors and whatnot (think carnival, but everybody painted in the colours of the rainbow) passing through the streets, accompanied by music and everything and everybody pelting each other with colours... The sky turns red, green, white and orange with powder, water, flowers and everything else that can been thrown down on the crowd.. It is spectacular... And than it is over... The crowd has passed, the streets get cleaned, a lonely lost looking Milka cow roaming around and everybody else bathing in the ghats or at home trying to get the colours of.. But it is only over in Mathura...
The next day we went to a village called Baldeo which was celebrating it that particular day in the village temple and with it's own
Fatehpur Sikri
Moon over the Mosque
set of traditions... In this case those that are participating in the celebrations are in the courtyard of the temple and those that come to watch stay on the roofs (that would be us..) a kind of safe distance from the celebrations.. There is music, chanting, dancing, slowly some colours come out, the dancing becomes more frantic, more colours... The women start tearing the shirts of the men and than whipping them with their shirts... The men respond by throwing buckets of coloured water on the women... More music, more dancing, more colours, showers located on the temple walls are turned on, so the crowd gets soaked, more whipping... Powder is thrown onto the crowd from the roof... Some holly men walk around with a stick with fake fruit and flowers and branches stuck to it and the crowd follows them around the centre temple all the while throwing buckets of coloured water on each other, jumping and sliding in the by now very wet courtyard and powder drifting on them from above... What a sight... At around 2 o'clock it was all over again... But it was well worth it all...
The next day we (the few other backpackers
Fatehpur Sikri
Palace of Akbar the Great, close up of balcony on the Palace of Jodh Bai
that were staying in my hotel and myself) toured around the temples in Mathura and Vrindavan...
And than it was time to move on... Lucknow was the next destination for Vojta and I... This is the place where in 1857 the Indians rebelled against British rule after some mismanaged incidents... It started and ended here and was the scene of a famous siege... All the British soldiers and civilians together with those troops that had remained loyal retreated into a compound called the residence and were besieged for over 100 days... Many lost their lives on both sides before the rebellion was finally crushed... The residency remains as it was after the siege, with the buildings riddled with bullet and cannon balls... Apart from that Lucknow also has some fine Muslim architecture a legacy of the Nawabs the rulers of Lucknow before the British deposed of them... It is also one of the cleanest and most orderly Indian cities I have seen so far... In that respect very un-Indian you could say...
Well that was it... Enjoy!
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