Agra: In which our hero makes it.

Arriving by train into Agra, with the Red Fort on one side and a huge mosque on the other, is a strange experience. I was kind of in a daze the whole time I was there, so didn't take that many pics. I had to be on my game, too, after small-town Bundi - touts and commissions and tourist traps abound. I got shown round various sites:

The Baby Taj, as it's known:



The Itmad-ud-Duala tomb on the Yamuna River. That's my thumb in the corner:


To be honest, I wasn't that keen on seeing the Taj. I'd seen it when I was seven and remembered feeling a bit ho-hum about it. Everyone was talking about going to see the Taj... what for, to check it's there?

The whole day after Fatehpur Sikri I was working myself into a negative feeling about it: it was a big monument to waste, so much money and effort for a grandiose building, etc. Stumping along the path on the river bank opposite the Taj, I saw villagers and subsistence farmers living just as they would have when it was being built. This just got me even grumpier.

And then I came round the river bend and saw the Taj. And it is beautiful. And the idea behind it is beautiful - Shah Jahan built it as a tomb for his dead wife. It's a grand romantic grieving gesture, and it would be my number two location to bring a girl, after Udaipur.

So here it is...

Notice how it's on a raised platform? That's so it's background is always the sky. Shah Jahan was going to build another Taj as a tomb for himself on the other side of the river bank in black marble. Perhaps that's why his son Aurangzeb imprisoned him in his own Red Fort (at least he got a view of the Taj from the Fort). He's buried next to his wife in the mausoleum under the Taj.

While I was on the river bank a kid came up with a camel and asked if I'd like a picture on the camel. I misheard and thought he'd asked if I wanted to buy a camel. He said he would sell me the camel, but then he would have no other camel to earn money with. I asked the going rate on camels these days. He thought for a minute, and said "oh, about a million rupees". Smart kid. He also took this pic of me:

As it turned out it was a free day to go see the Taj, so I had no excuse to miss it (normally it's 700 rupees!). This meant the place was packed with Indians, which was great. You go in through this gate, and I have to admit when I glimpsed the white marble through the dorway I got a bit excited. Some American tourists behind me said "we made it," and I had to agree. If nothing else, I've seen the Taj.

Looking forward...

looking back:

To the side:

Down low... Muslim drainage.

The amazing thing about the white marble is that the building changes colour according to the light. When I went it was kind of an overcast day, but at one point the sun came out and the Taj glowed yellow, and everyone burst into applause. It's that kind of building.

Of minor interest, here's an interesting factoid from the Red Fort (if you can read it). My question is, how does one aggrieved person shake an 80 foot gold chain?