How a world heritage site became a tourist nightmare

The bloodied photos of the Swiss couple who were beaten up at Fatehpur Sikri shocked India. But other tourists who have visited the monument have their own harrowing tale to tell

Many of us might remember the ’90s number from Pardes, “Do dil mil rahe hain”. Apart from Shah Rukh Khan, what made the song memorable was the stunning backdrop — the ruins of Fatehpur Sikri, a romance in red sandstone that became Emperor Akbar’s ode to social harmony and acceptance.

But for many tourists today, this Unesco World Heritage site is now more about denial than acceptance — denial of the freedom to be left alone, to see what you want to see, not to be bothered by strangers for a selfie. It has recently hit headlines for a horrifc incident where a Swiss couple was chased and assaulted by a bunch of young men.


Anyone who has been to Fatehpur Sikri recently can identify with this feeling of being hunted by random strangers. Two years ago, Rohit Arora, employed with a global pharmaceutical company, had driven down to Fatehpur Sikri from Delhi. “I was with my wife and two-year-old child. Just before we entered the city area, a group of people started waving frantically at us to stop, practically blocking the car. These ‘guides’ gave us false warnings about road closures and parking problems, and offered to take us to the right place, getting rude when I said no,” Arora says.

Brian DeMuro, an American visitor, shared a similar experience on Facebook. He had gone to Fatehpur Sikri a day before the Swiss couple was attacked. “As I was approaching the city by car, we were suddenly surrounded by touts on motorcycles driving dangerously close to the car, motioning to us to roll down the windows. To defuse the dangerous situation we decided to stop the car and talk to them, hoping they would lose interest once we told them their services weren’t needed. That didn’t work. They were persistent up until we entered the government parking lot.”

This correspondent first visited the site in 2001, then in 2005 and again on October 5 this year, and the experience has steadily worsened. This time, we drove to Agra first and then Fatehpur Sikri. Our cab driver knew what and whom to avoid. After a short visit to Sikandra to see Akbar’s tomb, we reached Fatehpur Sikri. And the minute we entered, we were fair game for touts. Their nuisance was acknowledged even by UP CM Yogi Adityanath in May when he spoke about the need to rein in Agra’s ‘lapkas’ (local name for touts) and Mathura’s pandas.

But the lapkas remain unfazed. They won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, as they push and threaten. My patience soon gave way to anger and frustration. The guide rates were dropping fast — from Rs 500 to Rs 50 by the time we reached the bus that would ferry us to the palace complex. The last one made a final attempt: “Fatehpur is different and Sikri is different. You will be lost if you don’t take me. Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.”

“It’s full of aggressive touts, you can’t even sit for a while,” says IT expert Tanvir Alam, who had visited the site with his wife Suhana Shirin, a teacher, on December 26, 2015. “The lapkas are mostly teenage boys who harass you till you avail of their services. Then they take you to every shop and coerce you to buy overpriced things.” Arora was surrounded by persistent hawkers at the dargah of Shaikh Salim Chishti inside the Jama Masjid. “And they were much worse with the foreigners,” he says.

It doesn’t get easier inside. In my case, at no point was I left alone by the so-called guides with their “hellos” and “skkyuuzz mees”. A new set of touts were waiting as we left the palace complex and headed towards the mosque. They called themselves dargah staff and their rates started at Rs 150. As we reached the gateway, we were warned that our shoes might disappear if we didn’t take a “dargah guide”. A little boy, barely 10 or 11, was appointed our guide for Rs 20. He told us a lot of rubbish. A locked passageway was shown to us as the Anarkali’s escape route.

Ambrin Hayat, from Lahore, who visited in January 2016, says the 16th century architecture is meant to evoke tranquility. “Salim Chisti’s shrine had a sublime aura around it, but the guides were a total nuisance,” he recalls. Arora has told foreign colleagues to avoid Sikri altogether. “Stalking is relatively less common in Agra, but Fatehpur is the worst I’ve experienced in any country,” he says.

Travel author Sharell Cook agrees. “Local guides, beggars, goons, guides, and touts all harass tourists there,” she says. The only way to improve the situation, she says, is to have special tourist police at the site. “At Fatehpur Sikri, the harassment has been going on for years, unchecked. It’s reached a point where many of my friends in the tour business won’t take their clients there anymore,” Cook says.
By the time we reached the dargah, we’d had enough. A sweeper at the mosque demanded money. The beauty of the white marble structure was marred by wafer packets and gutkha stains. We left without entering the dargah. Back at the parking lot, shopkeepers started pestering us, the touts were catcalling black tourists, using offensive words like “habshi”. They seemed to find it funny that the tourists didn’t understand their language.

The story of Fatehpur Sikri’s neglect has been one of India’s worst-kept travel secrets for too long. By allowing such an atmosphere to persist, the country stands to lose more than foreign exchange — it threatens India’s image and goodwill.