Advertisement
Published: April 10th 2008
Group photo at Fatehpur Sikri - Ghost town.
Back: Janine, Carl, Joe, Harriet, Tara, Me, Sammy, Matt.
Front: Jen, Charlotte, Tim, Manu, MorvenGhost Town - whoooooo!
On the drive to Jaipur, capital of Rajasthan and the biggest state in India, we stopped off at the deserted Mogul city of Fatehpur Sikri - or Ghost Town.
It was built over a period of 12 years but despite an artificial lake being made the water ran dry after only 3 years habitation and the fort place became a ghost town! The emperor, king, maharaja (can't remember what his title was - he was VERY rich whoever he was!) had three wives, 1 muslim, 1 hindu and 1 catholic. Each had their own quarters but they were very different. The muslim wife had only one room but it was lined with mirrors and diamonds. The catholic wife had four rooms but these were covered with gold and paintings. The hindu wife had a huge palace of many rooms but with no decorations. Therefore although seemingly unequal they all remained happy with their lot! There were also 365 conqubines living within the wall and the only other men allowed in the building were the eunoch guards!
Amber Fort, Jaipur
First thing to get straight was pronunciations of the Amber Fort which is actually
pronounced 'Ammer Fort'. Again the fort was made by successive rulers over a long period - 125 years this time! In the section we saw a building with several columns the outer ones in the red stone that Jaipur is famous for and the inner ones in white marble. Our guide pointed out the carvings at the base of the columns were of moghal design and the tops (elephants) Hindu. This was an area for meetings where complaints and disputes were heard and pronouncements and decisions made. Part of the building is called the palace of winds or Hawa Mahal where a thousand windows look out over this courtyard area. The women were not allowed to be seen hence the little windows to watch by. There was a central window that the wives of the Maharaja could drop petals before her husband entered.
This Maharaja had 12 wives, 100 concubines and hundreds of female servants (in other words about 400 women to have fun with!!). Again eunochs guarded the fort. The fort has 12 different appartments, all identical in size for the 12 Maharini interconnected by secret passage ways for the Maharaja to go in search of his chosen
Short doors!
To make it harder for enemies to attack. wife for the night. There would have been beautiful carpets laid on the stone floors and heavy curtains hanging in the stone doorways and windows.
There is a current day Maharaja descended from the same blood line. Unfortunately he only had a daughter so did not have a direct successor. When this happens the first son born to his daughter is adpoted and then become the next in line (i.e his grandson). No female successors here. Wouldn't really have worked with all the wives appartments and so on. Don't think she would be able to have 12 husbands!!
On the way back from the Fort we stopped off at a block printing and carpet making place. It was fascinating watching the long length of cloth being stamped first with one block and one colour then overlaid with a different block and different colour. Usually they have about 7 colours/blocks to make up the whole pattern. The guys doing it were so expert and covered the cloth really quickly. We also had a demo of the way the colours change after soaking in water (with some additions - not sure what they were). We then watched the carpet weaving
which is actually done by kind of twisting the wool between two threads then cutting. The weavers traditionally sing the patterns as they weave the knotted patterns. It doesn't just follow along one row at a time either but rather by completing one colour block. They also demonstrated how they use tools on the completed carpets to cut through the knots and trim the surface. The back is then burnt for some reason - looked pretty alarming! Then they are washed and dried. They took us to look at some of the finished - highly expensive - carpets in their showroom. They were some traditional Indian designs and then some with more unusual designs in really vivid colours. Considering they use only natural dyes it's amazing to see how bright the colours are.
Jantur Mantar Observatory
The next stop on our tour of Jaipur took us to the Jantar Mantur Observatory created by an astronomer King in the 18th century. The place was full of what looked like some sort of amazing modern day structures or modern art. In reality they were huge stone sun dials, or structures used to measure altitude, movement of the stars, planets, horoscopes
etc. The 'small' version of the sundials was accurate to 20 seconds while the large one (largest in the world!) was accurate to 2 seconds. There were some set as half spheres in the ground and these were used to measure longitude or latitude - all very scientific and amazing that they could build them so accurately all those years ago, particularly the large ones which stood the height of a three storey building at least!
City Palace
This is the home of the current Maharja and also now houses a museum of armoury, clothes of the past inhabitants and paintings. The armoury looked like something from a Klingon battle ground! The clothing was so ornate and one was from a previous Maharaja who obviously enjoyed his food as he was said to be 7 feet tall and 4 feet wide!! His trousers were HUGE! One of the Maharini's Devali dresses made of black material and with lots of heavy embroidery was over 9kg in weight! We finished off the tour with a visit to the craft and art shop to watch demonstrations of the intricate painting technique that uses a single hair from a squirrel. Oh yes,
and I have the demo in my note book! The guy turned out to be an award winning artist given the highest honour attainable in his field. So I felt lucky to have his elephant sketch in my notebook. Some of us bought some of his smaller paintings - mine is of a peacock which symbolises happiness and prosperity.
In the courtyard prepartions were afoot for the evenings festival (celebrating married women and blessing their husbands with long lives). Some ladies grabbed me and Morven to give us some henna patterns on our hands. At a cost. Everything in India is at a cost! We had to leave them to dry for an hour before peeling off. Looks really orange on my pasty white skin!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.084s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 12; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0391s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
shaurya
non-member comment
ghost town
i do"nt belive in ghost he he