World Heritage Day Bonanza

  Jaisalmer, Bharatpur and Agra, India
Monday, April 18, 2005

Jaipur
We arrived early in the 3rd corner of the 'golden triangle', the city of Jaipur and after a few hours catching up on sleep we went to the city where we had the best lassi ever, creamy and sweet and drunk out of a terracotta cup that you could throw on the ground after (which of course Michael had to do)! The Palace was pretty disapointing and the fort didn't seem worth the hike out to it after the fantastic forts in Jaisalmer and Jodphur so we decided to move on the following day.

Keoladeo National Park, Bharatpur
We decided to stop on the way to the monuments of Agra and spend a day at the World Heritage Keoladeo National Park near the town of Bharatpur. The park is mainly a wetland, as well as some woodlands and grasslands. It is home to hundresds of species of birds as well as large mammals and reptiles. We hired a couple of bikes and cycled around the relatively small park, constantly stopping to view the plethora of wildlife on offer. In a short time we saw an array of birds including five foot cranes 'dancing', a massive raptor only about 2 metres from us unconcerned by our presence, various kinds of deers - many of which we had to steer our bicycles around to avoid, a metre long turtle going cross country, large monitor lizards, wild foxes and langurs and of course 'feral cattle' (many, we are told are pushed in by surrounding villagers to fatten up on the special grass that grows in tha park.)

World Heritage Day in India
Using Bharatpur as our base, we headed to the ruined city of Fatephur Sikri, 30 kms away. We caught a jeep, which operate like local buses in this area. As honourary foreigners, we got the two front seats (although we probably also paid 'foreigner's rate' for the luxury), while a seemingly unending amount of people were squeezed in the back, then hanging off the back and sides, then the roof as we drove at an alarming speed down the road. As we entered the site we noticed a sign 'World Hertiage Day - 18 April 2005'. After debating the date for some time, we realised that was today and were amazed to discover that all of India's vastly overpriced* world heritage sites were free today. We didn't need much more encouragement to extend our day trip to Agra (30km away) to visit the horrendously overpriced Taj Mahal and the generally overpriced Agra Fort.

Anyway, Fatephur Sikri was quite good, notably a spectacular mosque- still used - and also interesting the women's quarters where 'Akbar the Great' housed his 500+ harem and the nearby gameboard, where he played three month long games of Backgammon using slavegirls as pieces (Kate may have prayed for a good husband in Jodphur but Michael prays for a 500 + harem ;-).

We caught another jeep to Agra, then negotiated with a disturbingly crazy rickshaw driver to get to Agra Fort (he thought it was immensly funny that Kate told him '20 rupees but no shops"). The fort has two moats and mighty red walls and includes innumerables marble palaces as well as more rooms for Akbar's harem and another game board. Unforunately, much of the fort is occupied by the army and inaccessible. Strange given that it is a major tourist attraction and heritage building, but not surprising given the filth, corruption and chaos that Agra itself has descended into. Then it was on to the Taj Mahal...



You hear so much about the Taj Mahal and expectations were high. However, nothing will prepare you for its majesty and perfection. As the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore states, it is 'a teardrop on the face of eternity'. Akbar's son built it as a tomb for his 'favourite' wife and it is so much more than just a building. It is the single most spectacular thing we have seen in India rising out of the dirt and general decay like a ray of light. Three hours of gazing at this amazing sight was really not enough but we eventually left back for the lovely family run Kiran Guesthouse in Bharatpur where a delicious home cooked meal awaited us.

Anyway, thanks to World Heritage Day we saved over 2500 rupees (yay), survived Agra (and made it back to Bharatpur alive - just), and had an absolutley brilliant day.

*Kate in particular had been quite annoyed during our travels at the overpricing of world heritage monuments for foreigner visitors; often 250 times the price for locals, the Taj tops the list at 750 rupees, or approx $23 comapred to 20 rupees (70 cents) for Indians