Fatehpur Sikri and staying with the Maharaja of Karauli

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After treating ourselves to a lie-in, we were relieved to find the massive Japanese tour party had already left, and normal service had resumed in the restaurant.

We set off on the next leg of our journey. First stop was Fatehpur Sikri, a new capital city built by Emperor Akbar in 1571 on the site of the retreat of a Chishti saint, a Sufi whose blessings Akbar believed had led the birth of his son and heir Salim, the future Emperor Jahangir. The entire city was abandoned in 1585, some believe as a result of a lack of water, but no one really knows why. It stands in all its 16^th century glory, the royal palace built in red sandstone and looking like it has just been completed and is waiting for the interior decorators and furnishers to move in and finish it off. In true Thomas fashion we went round it at midday, the very hottest time to pick. Mad dogs and Englishmen.... fortunately there were cooling breezes to save us from overheating.

Further up the hill is the Jama Masjid, a huge mosque that houses within its walled precincts the white marble tomb of the Sufi saint, where you enter and process clockwise around the tomb itself, while the devout say their prayers, some of them also doubtless asking for a child to be born to them. The city of Fatehpur Sikri itself was huge and is enclosed within a defensive wall, but much of it is now demolished or awaiting the archaeologists when funds permit.

After a much longer journey than expected –mostly due to the driver apparently picking a much longer route than the one we’d assumed he would take, we arrived in Karauli. This small town is very much off the beaten tourist track, and as we approached, we were struggling to remember anything about the hotel we’d booked, and feeling faintly nervous. A set of yellow gates loomed, and we swept up the semi circular drive of the new palace built by the Maharajah in 1938 after he left the 700 year old palace in the centre of town. We sat down in a sitting room full of family portraits and photos, dominated by a massive stuffed tiger and were greeted by the Maharajah’s son, who explained some of the family history to us. The tiger was a maneater and was killed by his grandfather a 100 years ago.

The fact that we had booked direct, and not through a tour company, caused the manager considerable consternation. He kept asking for our booking voucher, but eventually settled for the hard copy of our email correspondence with the hotel. We were then taken through a central courtyard to our room – or, rather, rooms. We passed through a dining room and sitting room which we seem to share with one other room, then reached our bedroom, with a similarly sized dressing room and through that the bathroom. Everything looked pretty much untouched since the 1930s, including the electrical wiring. It’s real privilege to be living in such a heritage place and to be genuinely exhorted to treat it like our home.

After unpacking, we set off for walk through the grounds. The manager spotted us and gave us a guided tour, taking in the oldest wing of the building, vegetable garden, the orchard, the wheat and hay fields, the dairy and stables and the collection of vintage cars, including a Delusso and a Buick. The Maharani told us her husband was especially keen on the dairy farm, to the extent that when they had visited Amsterdam, he’d gone off to visit farms while she went to the museums. The Maharajah was sitting in the cowshed, talking to the farmhands, much too busy to join us. The family are clearly determined to keep their family home and heritage going, and indeed to support the wider community, sitting on the trust looking after the local temples, maintaining the old palace and running three schools as well as employing 100 people to run the estate and the hotel. True benevolence towards the people who rely on them, in contrast perhaps to the often venal politicians who run local and national government.



After a simple but excellent dinner, we returned to our room. ‘Sara, come here’ called David from the bathroom in a tone that said ‘come at once’. She hurried over, for him to point out the tail of a lizard which was about 6” long, that had somehow got into the toilet and hidden itself under the rim of the bowl, leaving only his tail visible. Now, we don’t mind lizards, but Sara did not fancy sitting on a toilet with a lizard moving around in it. We tried flushing the toilet, but that served only to expose a bit more of the lizard. Time to call for help. Two boys appeared and stared in some bemusement. They tried to dislodge it with a small brush, to no avail. They flushed, brushed, and flushed again. No good. Sara suggested scooping it out with a jug so it could be set free in the garden, which was rejected as ridiculous. One of them went off and reappeared with a small piece of piping, with which he proceeded to beat the hapless lizard while his colleague held it down with the brush. By now we were beginning to feel sorry for the lizard. Eventually, they filled a huge bucket full of water and flushed the now presumably mortally wounded lizard away with a triumphal flourish. It has not reappeared (yet).

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