I'm riding out to Agra, Uttar Pradesh in Northern India to meet a couple with an ancient, and much customised, Enfield Bullet motorcycle. Francis, a Hungarian raised in Germany, owns a dive school in Egypt. His girlfriend, Miyuki, is from Tokyo. We meet up and hit Agra on Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar when Muslims mourn the death of the grandson of Muhammed. Eight loudspeakers directly outside our backpacker's dosshouse blare the chant from dusk till dawn: Hassan Hussein, Hassan Hussein. More rewarding than sleep is watching a splendid ballet of whirling stick fights to the beat of drums. Dawn brings a procession of handcarts bearing child-built minarets of multicolored paper. Children sitting on the carts call me uncle. How many small hands do I shake? At least one hundred.
Last night Agra, tonight a Tibetan-owned guesthouse outside the abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri in Uttar Pradesh. The city is unexpectedly full and most accommodation is either taken, or trebled in price. A kindly local policeman leads Francis and I down a dirt path and across a refuse dump to a failed attempt at a village. Here, the Sunset Guest house is cheap with a warm welcome. Our fellow guests — Argentinians touring around on a tandem — are a little weird, though, I guess they may think the same of us.
For those who admire intricate stone carving, the citadel at Fatehpur Sikri is superb. Built in the second half of the 16th century by the Mughal Emperor Akbar it is a remarkable complex with the Diwan-i-Khas or Hall of Private Audience the most remarkable of all. Here Akbar sat on a throne raised high on a pillar and debated with philosophers of every faith while they sat in a circular gallery connected to the throne by four bridges. A liberal as emperors go, Akbar's three wives were a Turkish Muslim, a Hindu princess and a Christian from Goa. He is one of two protagonists in Salman Rushdie's novel, The Moor's Last Sigh.
While peacefully wandering the citadel, I am accosted by a pugnacious Indian man wearing a pale green suit and a felt elf-like hat.
'What do you think of this?' he demands without preamble or introduction.
'Is it beautiful? Have you been in England? Have you visited Hampton Court? That is beauty. Built the same time as this. I know. I am history graduate.'
Surely, I protest, we should imagine the citadel as it was: courtyards cooled by fountains, beautiful maidens in embroidered silk, great pots planted with lemon trees, pomegranates, roses...
'No, no, no — that is all decoration with no importance. Hampton court is not needing imagination...'
We meet again later in the afternoon. He immediately launches a fresh attack on Akbar's citadel. He is accompanied by a tall well-built 30-something to whom I plead, 'You have to listen to this?'
'Listen?' he says in one of those wondrously casual up-market English Home Counties voices. 'I've had to listen all my life. He's my dad.'
Dawn on the roof terrace at the Sunset Guesthouse. In the valley below, a thin mist lies across pale green fields bordered by trees. The Nepalese owner of the guesthouse feeds birds each morning on a smaller terrace. Striped squirrels scavenge for yesterday's seeds. Doves wheel above the trees. Shrill children's voices argue with mothers in the nearby village. A drum beats in town. Here, on the hill, the sun burns through the mist and warms my fingers as I type. Staff appear rubbing sleep from their eyes. 'Breakfast, Uncle?' Breakfast would be great, coffee, masala omelette, toast.
The lower end of the fortress is now a faint grey line of stone teeth and the mist gentles the ghastly tower monument to the liberal Emperor's favourite executioner, the elephant Crunch Crunch.
The owner spreads seed on the bird terrace. Sparrows are first to the feast followed by a grey-necked crow, then 20 or more parakeets. They are argumentative and drown out the village voices. The staff have a fire burning outside the kitchen. Wood smoke faintly scents the air. Breakfast arrives. A diffident French couple comes to table, muffled and gentle voiced. Next one of the Argentinian tandem riders arrives to drape laundry on the rail. Francis briefly surfaces to report that he is only running 10 minutes late for our proposed 9am departure for Pushkar.
On such a glorious morning, timetables are for the birds. Ahead lie the open roads of Rajasthan’s immense desert. I am a very very fortunate old man...
Simon Gandolfi will be blogging regularly about his Indian motorbike adventure. To find out more about Simon visit simongandolfi.com
