"Malaria" the plump, barely-comprehensible hotel doctor had diagnosed following the most cursory of examinations. After scripting me a slew of medications and assuring me that I could bike today, he waddled out of the room and left me to go off and explore Agra fort. It was magnificent, and we had the grand place practically to ourselves --a distinctly different experience than the Taj yesterday. Watching the fading light play off the distant dome and minarets of the more famous of Agra's monuments, I marveled once again how India's tourist attractions blow away those of China. This morning I felt slightly better, even managing to swallow a few bites of a sorry buffet breakfast.
Getting out of Agra was a bizarre experience, as it was never clear whether we were in the city or the countryside. Agricultural pockets were interspersed among disorderly swathes of Indian urban hell, and our route was neither straight nor clear, forcing us to stop at every intersection and ask stupidly: "Fatehpur Sikri?" and wait for the locals to deliberate before a quorum was reached. While playing dodge-em with potholes, sacred cows, filthy screaming children, oxcarts, camels and an endless sea of teeming humanity, my fever-addled brain pondered on the relationship Indians have with shit. To my mind it's a major component of what makes this wondrous country so unsettling to Westerners, and to Americans in particular.
Shit is everywhere in India, seemingly viewed as an ordinary (and sometimes vital and valuable) element of the organic experience, not something to be flushed away as unmentionable filth. The large numbers of domesticated animals in the towns and countryside alike mean that the streets and highways are practically paved in the stuff. One often sees women and children scooping it up with their hands and lovingly patting it into poop pancakes, which they subsequently sun-dry on any available wall space to be burned later as fuel. These dried patties are kept in elaborately decorated miniature mud huts \--little temples erected to the god or gods of excrement.
Few landscapes come without a peasant crouching somewhere in the fields, carrying a little can of water to clean himself, while children commonly squat to defecate in the gutter of the street, placidly regarding the bedlam that surrounds them. In India shit doesn't just happen; shit *is*. I noticed another thing going out of Agra: Indians are far better cyclists than, say, the Chinese. They don't swerve randomly and appear to be generally aware of what's going on around them. The most striking difference between Indian and Chinese cyclists, though, is their relative rates of speed. Indians are fast! We were surprised to be overtaken not by the usual testosterone-laden adolescents trying to prove something, but by ordinary peasants on their way to wherever it is that peasants go.
The forty-odd kilometers to Fatehpur Sikri were smooth and fast and flat flat flat. Most of the traffic was cycles and camel carts (a mode of transport to which I have become forever endeared); the only cars were funky Ambassadors --their design unchanged since the 1940's---carrying pairs of white tourists in their backseats, creating an illusion of colonial times. Some of these post-sahibs stared at us in disbelief through the glass, causing me to think how differently we were experiencing the same road. Another strange feature of this morning's ride were the literally dozens of dancing bears lining the roadside, waiting to perform for tourist rupees.
Fatehpur Sikri is an old capital of the Moghuls, built by Akbar and inhabited for only seventeen years before they moved off to Agra. It is a remarkable place, surrounded by a huge 10-kilometer long wall and surmounted by a citadel containing the religious city (Fatehpur) and the royal residences (Sikri). We stored our bikes in a goat shed and allowed ourselves to be guided around by a friendly and knowledgeable young Muslim. He told us that the bird sanctuary at Bharatpur was only 20 kilometers away on a mostly good road -- a fact for which I was glad. My energy had been all but drained, and the final hour of pedaling felt more like six.
All along this stretch children would come racing out of the field screaming "Hello pen!", reminding us we were back on the tourist trail, and causing me to curse inwardly the stupid pen-toting tourist who passed through before us. When we reached our shabby, overpriced lodgings within the bird sanctuary I fairly leapt into bed, entreating Fred to explore on his own. He came back raving about the millions of birds he'd seen. Since it is uncharacteristic of Fred to get excited about birds I knew it must be something pretty special. He coaxed me to eat some dinner, where we met a newly-retired English couple who had planned five months in India but now intended to return after just two weeks.
Fred listened intently to their impressions as I suspect he's been planning to bail out as well (though he's promised me two weeks here before he'll make any final judgment). India is definitely an intense place, and not for everyone --which for me only adds to its appeal.