Rajasthan, 06.09.03

Hello everybody

After my pleasent stay in Delhi for more than one week, I am now back on the road. I was heading south to Agra to see the red Fort and the Taj Mahal... which was not so stunning as I would have expected, although it was very nice to visit and surprisingly clean for indian standards....

As some of you might know, Agra is famous for cheating tourists whenever someone gets an opportunity, to avoid this greedy Rikshaw drivers, I rented a bicycle and cycled from sight to sight, another very nice experience to ride with a cycle through the indian traffic...

On the way to Agra I also visited the Birth Place of Krishna, which is nowadays also the place where the Hare Krishna Movement has settled, but it was not really worth a visit, this greedy hare krishna shouting mob in front of the temple who wanted only my money, made me to leave the place quickly.

After Agra I went in direction of Jaipur, on its way I stoppet at the ghost city Fatehpur Sikri, which was once a moghul town, and now you can visit its remainings. And this place was indeed very nice to visit, and also very quiet, probably due to the fact, that almost everybody thinks it wouldnt be worth visiting...

Once in Jaipur, after riding into the seting sun, I checked into a nice hotel with a brilliant roof top terrace, where you can oversee the city.

Next day again I rented a Bicycle to drive from site to site, there are some ancient moghul palaces and astronomical sites to see. There is also a fortress, 200 m above the city, called the tiger fort, with a steep bumpy road winding itself up the hill, so I pushed the cycle uphills (cause there is only one gear) to enjoy afterwards the tiger fort downhill ride... unfortunately when I came back to the cycle, some bad tempered person had let out the air of my front tire, so I had to ride down the bumpy road with a flat tire, which made it even more bumpy, and this indian cycle breaks are not as good as this advanced MTB disc brakes... but it was fun, and still better than walking down.

Today I took my Motorbike to drive outside of Jaipur to visit the precedent capital, which was set up about 10 km outside Jaipur and is called Amber or Amer, also with a fortress and a palace. You could ride up to the palace on an elephant, but these poor animals deserve better than carriing tourists up the hill, so I walked the 10 minutes climb up the hill. The Palace was in pretty bad shape, and its walls where everywhere covered with red spots, which comes from the bad habit of indians of chewing beetle nuts and spitting the reddish remains to the floor or the wall.....

After the visit I watched the elefants taking their bath in the small lake below the palace, which was much nicer to see than the palace itself.

Tomorrow I will head to Ajmer, which is about 130 km south west of Jaipur, and than also spend some days at Pushkar, which is about 20 km from Ajmer, just on the other side of a hill.

So, thats all for now

hope you are all fine and not to depressed about the bad weather in Switzerland, by the way, here it is still hot and sunny, and to make it even better to take fotographs, the sky is often covered with white nicely shapped clouds.

Martin

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