Today's twenty-five kilometers hardly qualify it as a riding day. Our principal goal for the last remaining days of our Indian odyssey --and our whole trip---is to snag some relaxation, some *vacation*---before heading back to the cold and gray. Right this moment we're sitting by the side of the cleanest pool we've seen in India (which really isn't saying much), getting a concentrated dose of R 'n' R before hitting the long road to Pune and Bombay. Today began like almost any other BikeBrats day, at dawn. We saddled up relatively early for the warm-up pump up the *ghat*, the hill leading to the plateau above.
It wasn't bad at all, and I was pleased to learn we could go faster than a horse up such a grade. First tourist stop du jour was in the Muslim village at the top of the hill (Khuldabad), strewn with impressive Mughal-era chunks as well as the simple tomb of Aurangzeb, last of the Mughal emperors. Apparently his religious fervor and asceticism caused him to reject the idea of a tomb like his parents' (i.e. the Taj Mahal) in favor an ordinary little grave financed entirely by the proceeds of caps he knit and sold himself. While the story has a charming quality to it, the actual tourist site does not.
What with the screaming crowd of schoolboys all asking us our "country name", insisting we pose with them for photos, and begging us to autograph their hands, it was a monument we ought to have skipped. Far more interesting was the amazing fort at Daulatabad, considered to be the most impregnable fortress ever constructed, and site of another folksy tale. In the fourteenth century, Mohammad-bin-Tughlak, ruler of Delhi, forced the entire population to move here and proclaimed it his new capital. Thousands of people died on the 1500-km trek, and who knows how many died on the way back, after Mohammed-bin-Tughlak realized his error.
Now the old walled city contains mostly pasture land, plus one small village, but the fort remains largely intact. To get to the top you have to penetrate several sets of walls, cross a deep moat cut into the rock and trudge up dark bat-filled passageways where invaders used to get drowned in boiling tar. We wished we'd had some tar, too, to try it out on the hundreds of the most obnoxious schoolboys we've seen anywhere. They simply would not leave us alone, grating on our nerves and causing us to appeal to their minders. We often had to seek refuge in some dark cubbyhole just to get away from them, thus considerably lengthening the hefty ascent.
While hiding out from the agouti swarm at a pavilion near the top of the hill, we met a gregarious Dutch woman named Claire, whose waiting father we had already met below. We chatted for a long time before heading up the last steps to the top, where we found ourselves miraculously alone to enjoy the panoramic view. On the way down Claire regaled us with tales of her time as a summer school student at UCLA and experiences of her time on the road in Morocco. After beating off a battalion of persistent souvenir vendors, we climbed back on the bikes and rolled gently down towards Aurangabad under a canopy of banyan trees.
We haven't actually seen Aurangabad yet, since we deliberately chose a place in the countryside on the Ellora side of town. It's called "The Meadows" and features sanitized concrete bungalows set in a 15-acre compound with a pool (too cold to swim in, but like I said --clean), a gym, a jogging track, a conference center and a superb restaurant where Fred and I just gorged ourselves for lunch. It sure doesn't feel, look or smell like India here. My first impression of the place's layout, architecture and general feeling of abandonment reminded me of a communist-style French suburb, but Fred hit the nail on the head with "kibbutz resort", a bizarre hybrid which we actually experienced --what?\-- thirteen months ago in Israel.
...Now it's the next day and I'm feeling fantastic after what is perhaps the best massage I've ever experienced. Poor Fred has been feeling lousy so we've extended our stay here in Aurangabad. I went out exploring on my bike today, first to the Bibi-ka-Maqbara, a.k.a the "poor man's Taj Mahal". It was built by Aurangzeb's son Azam Shah in memory of his mother, constructed on the pattern of the Taj. Inside I was befriended by a group of portly Indian businessmen visiting from faraway Gwalior, one of whom shocked me by begging for a "souvenir from your country." From the Agouti Mahal it was a pastoral uphill ride to yet another series of caves, cut between the 6^th^ and 8^th^ centuries.
While less impressive than those of Ajanta or Ellora, they had the advantage of being absolutely deserted save for a few local ragamuffins. I also checked out a strange attraction known as Panchakki, part of an ancient water-management scheme and entirely without interest to the non-Indian tourist as far as I could see. An extended pedal through the town itself made it clear that Aurangabad is still very much a Muslim town, full of mosques and women wearing *chaddors*. I stopped at a couple of government-run tourist agencies for information about the route ahead --a total waste of time. No one could tell me anything about the road from here to Pune, and while everyone's heard of Ahmednagar --tomorrow's intended overnight stop---no one could tell me the first thing about it.
"It is not a place for tourists" was the verbatim response I got from both the state and federal tourist authorities. I suppose we'll see when we get there...