And Now We Are Sixteen

Medical problems come up for my sister Sybil. She had not felt well and not eaten for a couple days, worried with a pain in her side. Finally she has the hotel contact a doctor and is put on pain meds and scheduled for a sonogram the next day. She does get a short visit to the Taj before going off to the local clinic. The diagnosis is gall balder stones and immediate treatment in recommended. She plans to fly back to the US but changes her plan to have the surgery in Delhi and with recovery time she plans to rejoin us in three days. Not the trip she planned. 

The women on our trip

Back on the bus the rest of us press on for a trip to explore, a fort abandoned in the late 1500’s. Used only for 14 years at the time and the king Akbar, decided to move the capital. The fort, Fatehpur Sikri, is every bit as impressive as the Red Fort in Agra.. It sits covering an entire hilltop. It is remarkable well preserved after being abandoned for almost 500 years. This is probably due to its remote location so later forts and urban development meant no one tore it down for some other use. What may have killed the fort is the lack of water in the area. Just not enough to sustain the population density of the fort and a royal court.

We are staying in a local hotel, the Shahpura House, which was once a maharajah’s palace. It is richly decorated, with big old quirky rooms, the elevator goes up one side of the building but does not serve the other side, you have to go down to the bottom floor and walk up the other side to the restaurant. The rooms locked with huge pad locks, and pictures of important  past visitors to the Raj line the stairways. On the roof we dine and listen to local music and the ladies try the  dances with the local traditional dance troop but don’t have the fine balance to dance with six pots on their heads. We love it.  Why stay at a large international hotel chain when you can stay at a place like this? It is luxurious but the luxury comes from the regal status not from a modern building planted in an ancient world. We arrive at a time which is auspicious for getting married. We pass several wedding processions with the groom on a white horse or elephant. Party noise and fireworks go on into the night.

The wedding march