June 28 Sunday
We awoke early again from the Ranthambhore hotel, this time to catch an early morning train. We saw other bleary-eyed people in the hotel lobby waiting for their jungle safari ride as we has done the prior day. The hotel staff, who were great, called our room three times to make sure we were awake, prepared us a box breakfast and we were driven to the Sawai Madhopur train station. We arrived almost an hour early. The tour company staff always wants to ensure that nothing goes wrong and its very earnest young representative in this case was extra cautious.
The train station was large and to my surprise very busy on an early Sunday morning. Train travel is by far the most favored method of intercity travel among Indians, and the Indian National train network is one of the largest enterprises in the country. It employees 1.5 million people.
We had a reservation in the second tier (air conditioned with two seats abreast in a reserved, but open seating arrangement), but the representative insisted on getting our tickets. He also had to purchsse a pass to go on the platform with us to ensure that we got on the right train. The porters' union has a monopoly on baggage movement in train stations, so I had to pay to accompany them as they rolled our luggage.
The monkeys are all over the train station in huge numbers. Passengers feed them (I saw a monkey peel a banana) and there is lots of garbage to feed on. They scamper around the tracks, but always seem to get out of the way of the trains.
There were lots of trains with corresponding deafening announcements of their arrivals and departures, also accompanied by loud chimes. The train station is also the site of a culinary circus. Even before 7:00am there were vendors on the platform selling food primarily to passengers in the train and passing the money and food through the window grills. This activity was even more intense when we exited the train 2.5 hours later. I was amazed at the wide variety of food being sold and that the vendors were even pouring sauces on the food through the windows.
We had reserved seats on the train that were occupied by a family with whom we switched seats. Early Sunday morning and the train was full. In the second class compartment it was jammed. It reminded me of a great snow day at Snowbird when the tram is packed to capacity. Passangers hanging out of doors and protruding out of windows. At each station groups of passengers held back from getting into second class, I assume to avoid getting jammed in the middle, and so as the train was pulling out of the station there was a mad dash by this group to jump on.
There are also lots of orange clad official food vendors on the train and even a mopping and cleanup crew that periodically came through. We arrived at Bharatpur about 10 minutes late and emerged into the heat and more culinary frenzy.
We were picked up by the tour company guide and drove to Fatehpur Sirki. This is a fortified ancient city that was briefly the capital of the Mughal empire. Supposedly Emperor Akbar, for all his magnificence, and his three primary wives (he was very ecumenical, as the wives were Hindu, Muslim and Christian), and perhaps because of his hundreds of concubines, had not produced a legitimate heir. Akbar visited with a local Muslim saint and shortly thereafter he had a son with his Hindu wife (according to a Bollywood 4-hour epic, she was the true love of his life). So Akbar got an heir and in honor of that, Akbar built this new fort and moved his capital here. The saint got a tomb in the fort.
The fort is a mixture of Hindu, Muslim, Mughal, Persian and Gothic architecture. It has the usual public and private assembly areas, a large mosque with the same name, Jama Masjid, as in Delhi, and grandeose emperor's quarters. It has three wives's palaces, one for each of the primary wives, built in the shape of the hand carriages that they were transported in. The British stripped the gold roofs off these structures and replaced it with brass. There was also a large courtyard which had a parchessi board laid out on it, in which the emperor played the game with scantily idressed dancing girls.
After Akbar died the capital was moved to Agra because of poor water supplies.
We then drove to Agra. Due to the heat we postponed the Agra activities to the next day. Our hotel, the Mansingh Palace, had a good location and pool, but otherwise it was a bland, modern hotel with no character that charged for everything and even imposed an hourly Internet charge.
We ate dinner at a rooftop restaurant on the Saniya Palace Hotel. We got a great view of the Taj Mahal and monkeys having sex on the roof. They lay out exhausted after the activity. The food was good too.
We awoke early again from the Ranthambhore hotel, this time to catch an early morning train. We saw other bleary-eyed people in the hotel lobby waiting for their jungle safari ride as we has done the prior day. The hotel staff, who were great, called our room three times to make sure we were awake, prepared us a box breakfast and we were driven to the Sawai Madhopur train station. We arrived almost an hour early. The tour company staff always wants to ensure that nothing goes wrong and its very earnest young representative in this case was extra cautious.
The train station was large and to my surprise very busy on an early Sunday morning. Train travel is by far the most favored method of intercity travel among Indians, and the Indian National train network is one of the largest enterprises in the country. It employees 1.5 million people.
We had a reservation in the second tier (air conditioned with two seats abreast in a reserved, but open seating arrangement), but the representative insisted on getting our tickets. He also had to purchsse a pass to go on the platform with us to ensure that we got on the right train. The porters' union has a monopoly on baggage movement in train stations, so I had to pay to accompany them as they rolled our luggage.
The monkeys are all over the train station in huge numbers. Passengers feed them (I saw a monkey peel a banana) and there is lots of garbage to feed on. They scamper around the tracks, but always seem to get out of the way of the trains.
There were lots of trains with corresponding deafening announcements of their arrivals and departures, also accompanied by loud chimes. The train station is also the site of a culinary circus. Even before 7:00am there were vendors on the platform selling food primarily to passengers in the train and passing the money and food through the window grills. This activity was even more intense when we exited the train 2.5 hours later. I was amazed at the wide variety of food being sold and that the vendors were even pouring sauces on the food through the windows.
We had reserved seats on the train that were occupied by a family with whom we switched seats. Early Sunday morning and the train was full. In the second class compartment it was jammed. It reminded me of a great snow day at Snowbird when the tram is packed to capacity. Passangers hanging out of doors and protruding out of windows. At each station groups of passengers held back from getting into second class, I assume to avoid getting jammed in the middle, and so as the train was pulling out of the station there was a mad dash by this group to jump on.
There are also lots of orange clad official food vendors on the train and even a mopping and cleanup crew that periodically came through. We arrived at Bharatpur about 10 minutes late and emerged into the heat and more culinary frenzy.
We were picked up by the tour company guide and drove to Fatehpur Sirki. This is a fortified ancient city that was briefly the capital of the Mughal empire. Supposedly Emperor Akbar, for all his magnificence, and his three primary wives (he was very ecumenical, as the wives were Hindu, Muslim and Christian), and perhaps because of his hundreds of concubines, had not produced a legitimate heir. Akbar visited with a local Muslim saint and shortly thereafter he had a son with his Hindu wife (according to a Bollywood 4-hour epic, she was the true love of his life). So Akbar got an heir and in honor of that, Akbar built this new fort and moved his capital here. The saint got a tomb in the fort.
The fort is a mixture of Hindu, Muslim, Mughal, Persian and Gothic architecture. It has the usual public and private assembly areas, a large mosque with the same name, Jama Masjid, as in Delhi, and grandeose emperor's quarters. It has three wives's palaces, one for each of the primary wives, built in the shape of the hand carriages that they were transported in. The British stripped the gold roofs off these structures and replaced it with brass. There was also a large courtyard which had a parchessi board laid out on it, in which the emperor played the game with scantily idressed dancing girls.
After Akbar died the capital was moved to Agra because of poor water supplies.
We then drove to Agra. Due to the heat we postponed the Agra activities to the next day. Our hotel, the Mansingh Palace, had a good location and pool, but otherwise it was a bland, modern hotel with no character that charged for everything and even imposed an hourly Internet charge.
We ate dinner at a rooftop restaurant on the Saniya Palace Hotel. We got a great view of the Taj Mahal and monkeys having sex on the roof. They lay out exhausted after the activity. The food was good too.
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