Day 192. Fatehpur Sikri, India. Lost.

While we were quick to sing Dubey's praises yesterday, i'm affraid the bugger had a shocker today.

We were supposed to be visiting the ancient abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri, and although we did eventually get there it was a long and painful process, taking in every road, village and field in the entire northern province.

From Delhi the journey should have taken 3 hours, maybe 3 and a half during monsoon or if there happened to be more livestock than usual grazing the central reservation.

Well, pathfinder Dubey managed to pull it off in just under 6 today.

100km out of Delhi he swerved off the highway and started heading across what can only be described a dirt track. Great we thought, he knows a short cut, we'll be there by lunchtime.

An hour later he was stopping to ask directions, an hour after that he was scratching his head and looking to the miniature Shiva on his dashboard for inspiration.

"We're lost aren't we Dubey?"
"No sir, not lost"

Another hour passes, now we're in a tractor traffic jam.

"You don't know where you're going do you Dubey"
"Oh yes sir, just crazy traffic today sir, we'll be there soon"

Another hour.

"Howay Dubey, admit it man, we're rudderless"

And so forth and so on, until eventually, by some freakish good fortune, we found our destination.

The upside to this protracted trawl, was that we got to see a big old chunk of rural India. The real India you could say, where the nobby bars of Mumbai and Delhi are a million miles away. We drove through small, remote communities where the living is simple, and to our eyes anyway, very tough indeed.

Fatehpur Sikri, when we finally arrived, was a fascinating place. A ghost town that was the short-lived capital of the Mughal empire between 1571 and 1585 during the reign of Emperor Akbar. It's main palace and mosque buildings remaining impressively intact to this day.

Unfortunately they didn't quite think things through when constructing this mighty citadel, as the nearest sizable water supply lay over 20 miles to the north. Once Akbar popped his clogs it only took a couple of blistering summers before everyone hot footed it up to Agra to start the building work all over again.