India-Day 6 Agra to Jaipur

We began our drive from Agra to Jaipur early passing by many farms, most were cultivating rape seed, used for oil.

During the drive the words from a Primary song kept running through my head, “Little pioneer children gather chips for wood.”  I first noticed this when I saw two little girls plastering something on the side of the large concrete pipes at the side of the road.  I realized that it was cow dung and they were plastering it there to dry.  Once the patties are dried they are stacked in mounds.  As we made our way through the countryside we saw the mounds everywhere.  It is still used as fuel.

We stopped at Fatepur Sikri.  This is where the leader Akbar moved his capital in honor of the mystic who “blessed” him with three sons.  The capital didn’t remain here long due to a lack of water.

We left our tour guide at the highway and he planned to make his way back to Agra by bus. We continued on our way to Jaipur with our excellent driver, Jagroop.  We got off the road after a couple hours and headed across the country side and through villages to Abhaneri.  We had lunch at a restaurant in the middle of the countryside.  It was a small resort with one small building for accomodations, another identical building under contruction and the restaurant building. Lunch was good and our waiter spoke to us in English,  he knew how to ask us what we wanted to drink in English and he also told us the names of the dishes in English but when we tried to talk to him he didn’t understand.

Abhaneri restaurant

Lunch was good and heading a different direction got us back to the main road and to the Harshat Matta temple and Chand Baori. Chand Baori was definitely the more interesting of the two.  It is a deep well with many sets of stairs going up and down three sides of the well in “V” share.  See the photo below

This was our last stop before heading on to Jaipur.  We checked into the hotel and spent the evening there.  We watched a dance performance and rested up for the full day to follow.