2007
Digitally composited image
Fatephur Sikri, India, March

Pilgrimage
Akbar the Great left many marks in the area: among them building the city of Fatephur Sikri, some fifty kilometers from Agra, for his capital. But it was never truly lived in. The lake, which was to provide water, dried up. Acres and acres of the remains of the buildings survive on a plateau above the plain.

There is a pilgrimage site near the main palace grounds: the tomb of a holy man who killed his own son so that the son might be reincarnated in the womb of Akbar’s barren wife. And the reincarnation occurred. Today people tie red threads on the lattice work surrounding his tomb as a votive for fertility.