On our way to Agra we stopped off in the little "town" of Fatehpur Sikri. It was a temporary capital before Agra was built around 1569 C.E. Now it mainly consists of the palace in which the Maharaja Akbar built and stayed in. Akbar was kind of a crazy guy and was notorious for lots of drugs and playing lots of games. The middle of the palace has a huge Pachisi board in marble in which he used to make slave girls dress up and act as pieces. There was also a room built just for the purpose of playing hide and go seek. He was also a great philosopher and considered himself a patron to all religions. He had a room built that had symbols from all of the major religions in which he would invite priests to come and stay and debate religion. Inside of the main courtyard there is also a small tomb in the name of the religious man who predicted that Akbar's third child would be a son. The palace was very beautiful and was a good stop over on the trip between Agra and Jaipur. Unfortunately we went there when it was raining, so it kind of dampened the experience. Also, the place is intensely overrun by people trying to sell you things. It is impossible to walk two steps without being haggled, and after an hour it gets very tiring. It was also frustrating after having just gotten off the bus for four hours and having no peace. The hired guide was not much use, any guide book said pretty much the same thing, and he only brought us around to his friends that tried to sell us things. Then a man beat off the beggars for us... then asked us for money for doing so. All in all it was a pretty frustrating experience because we were in such a large group and such a target. I feel if we had had more time and been in smaller groups without a guide, it would have been a much more pleasant experience.
On our way to Agra we stopped off in the little "town" of Fatehpur Sikri. It was a temporary capital before Agra was built around 1569 C.E. Now it mainly consists of the palace in which the Maharaja Akbar built and stayed in. Akbar was kind of a crazy guy and was notorious for lots of drugs and playing lots of games. The middle of the palace has a huge Pachisi board in marble in which he used to make slave girls dress up and act as pieces. There was also a room built just for the purpose of playing hide and go seek. He was also a great philosopher and considered himself a patron to all religions. He had a room built that had symbols from all of the major religions in which he would invite priests to come and stay and debate religion. Inside of the main courtyard there is also a small tomb in the name of the religious man who predicted that Akbar's third child would be a son. The palace was very beautiful and was a good stop over on the trip between Agra and Jaipur. Unfortunately we went there when it was raining, so it kind of dampened the experience. Also, the place is intensely overrun by people trying to sell you things. It is impossible to walk two steps without being haggled, and after an hour it gets very tiring. It was also frustrating after having just gotten off the bus for four hours and having no peace. The hired guide was not much use, any guide book said pretty much the same thing, and he only brought us around to his friends that tried to sell us things. Then a man beat off the beggars for us... then asked us for money for doing so. All in all it was a pretty frustrating experience because we were in such a large group and such a target. I feel if we had had more time and been in smaller groups without a guide, it would have been a much more pleasant experience.
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