Close to Bharatpur is Fatehpur Sikri a Unesco World Heritage site and a monument to the profligacy and wealth of the Mughal emperors. We want and don’t want to visit it as the reviews talk about aggresive hawkers but in the end we decide to do it as we cannot leave a Unesco World Heritage Site not visited. Our driver has a great idea that likely reduced significantly the number of hawkers we encounter, instead of taking the shuttle bus from the parking lot he left us at the entrance to the monument and we just walked in. It is a nice walk through the monument to the official entrance gate with few people and no hawkers.
Of course there are some “guides” and hawkers at the ticket entrance, but nothing as bad as we have encountered at other monuments in India previously. And then we enter the first courtyard which is quite impressive with many beautiful buildings. There is however some smog hanging around which makes everything look a bit gray and foggy, we hope that it will lift while we visit the site. We start with the Hall of Private Audiences a beautiful building close to the entrance.
It is quite beautiful inside with carvings of snakes supporting the ceiling and delicate details seemingly everywhere. We don’t spend that much time inside though, given that it is right next to the entrance there are still fake guides roaming around and begging you to hire them which takes away from enjoying the experience.
The courtyard is quite large and we continue exploring the multiple palaces and buildings set in the courtyard or on the perimeter. There are not that many tourists which is nice as we have the buildings to ourselves but also the fake guides unfortunately.
On the far side of the courtyard is the sunken garden fronting the Royal bedrooms but first we go towards the Turkish Sultana’s House, one of the better preserved buildings in Fatehpur Sikri.
The carvings here are very intricate and there are even some panels with birds and animals that are beautiful and we take our time exploring the building before moving on.
Next are the royal bedrooms which have some great views over the courtyard and the sunken garden, it must have been quite special during its heyday. Too bad that after Akbar gave the order and the complex was built he visited it only once, it was a lark it seems and a lot of money was spend on something that was basically abandoned thirty years later.
The palace is less ornate than Sultana’s House, maybe it never was completely finished? Still it is impressive with long corridors and multi level buildings. Unfortunately we cannot climb to the other levels as only the ground level is accesible.
It is now time to move towards the second courtyard using the colonnaded walkways to avoid the sun as it is starting to get hot around this time of the day.
The first building in the second courtyard is actually quite stunning. We cannot enter it but the facade is painstakingly built out of many carved bricks, it looks quite special.
in the middle of the courtyard is the walled in Jodha Bai Palace but before visiting it we decide to walk around it towards a building that becons to us, Birbal Palace.
This area is basically deserted with no one else visiting it so we have time to enjoy exploring the beautiful palace. It was part of the Imperial Harem and housed the two senior queens.
It has lots of beautiful details and you can enter and explore it at your leisure with not even a guard around to “guide” you. We marvel at the delicate details and how they survived till now, likely a restoration was done at some point in time.
Also here we notice many vultures circling in the skies high above and they seem different from the black kites we usually see. And then as we bring our eyes back to the building we notice an Egyptian Vulture, a lifer, watching us and almost laughing that we didn’t notice it previously.
Then it is time to walk what, for all intents and purposes, is a third very private courtyard for the harem with the harem buildings flanking it on both sides and Birbal Palace anchoring it from one end. You can actually walk through the harem and on the floor you can see the indentations that show were screens were laid creating individual rooms out of the huge communal one.
And then it is time to visit Jodha Bai Palace which can be entered through an impressive gate. This palace was comissioned by Akbar for his favorite queen, Mariam-uz-Zamani. It is built like a fortress with the interior having one building per side, except for the one that is occupied by the gate.
Most tourists seem to be concentrated in this courtyard but still there are fewer than usual and we can find our own building to explore with no other people interfering in our photos.
And then it is time to return to the car through the first courtyard. It is more lively now with all the fake guides occupied so we can enjoy it more than we entered as we are not hassled by anyone. We time our exit with the shuttles, if we leave while no shuttles are leaving or arriving the “helpful people” are less careful and engaged and we can pass through the chokepoints without being accosted.
And then all is left is to descend to the entrance where our driver is waiting while waving at the shuttle buses and thinking at the reception that awaits them at the top of the hill. And then on we go to the Chambal area where we reserved a room at a nature lodge and hope for some nice birding trips and river cruises in the area.
