Agra - aka the Taj Mahal

JUNE 25, 2016 

Today was the day we had all been waiting for. The day we came to see what everyone comes to India to see: the Taj Mahal. But first…

We arrived in Agra about 4 hours behind schedule. While our first train ride (Delhi to Varanasi) went off without a hitch, last night’s train gave us a real taste for traveling in India. It ran on Indian Standard Time, which is like Jewish time, but worse and less predictable. Our train arrived at the station 2 hours late and there were long stretches of time when the train was stopped in the middle of nowhere, or would move forward at a snail’s pace for a few minutes before stopping again. Fog? Too many cows on the tracks? We will never know….Our guide did warn us of these possibilities, though. He was once on a trip where the fog was so bad, the train was delayed 20 hours.

Regardless, we arrived. After freshening up, we made our first venture to the Red Fort, the one that is impressive to go see, the one that took 95 years to build, and the one that is one of the most architecturally impressive buildings I have been in (to answer your question, yes, it’s more impressive than the Taj Mahal). An example: the king’s bed chambers are intricately carved and used to be elaborately painted. On the back wall are a series of marble lattices, which used to be covered with grass mats. In the hot summer months, cool, perfumed water would travel through the walls and trickle down the grass mats. Women would stand with fans the other side of the wall to cool the king’s bedroom. 

A second example: there is a market inside the palace so that the royal women could go shopping. A third example: this giant enclosure (it’s technically a fort, not merely a palace) has not one, but two moats. From the outside going in, there is a 30-foot wide moat (now dry) that was once filled with alligators. Then, there is the outer wall. In case a moat with man-eating animals and a wall were insufficient, there was a second moat -- a dry moat -- that was filled with tigers (actually). Then there was the inner wall. 

A fourth example: look at this inlaid stone work. Impressive, right? This is from the prison. Granted, a part of the prison that hosted the former king (the son of the guy who built the Taj Mahal was a dick and imprisoned his father, but at least he was courteous enough to make the prison cell look quite nice).

Despite the impressive works that remain, the building is not in great shape. Apparently a lot of the (semi-)precious stones that used to adorn the still-elaborate walls of the fort/palace have been stolen. And many people have carved their initials into the soft sandstone from which most of the fort is built. After seeing this, I can understand why the security around the Taj Mahal is so tight (even the Daffelant wasn’t allowed in).

After our adventures at the fort, we headed to the Taj Mahal, a building that is impressive in its own right, but totally over-hyped. The totally white building is impressively designed, but not nearly as elaborately decorated as the Agra Fort. It’s beauty is in its near perfect symmetry (the only thing not symmetrical about the entire complex (including the gardens) is that when the Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan died he was buried next to his wife, whose tomb rests in the center of the building), and its beauty grows as the light fades. Watching the sun set behind the Taj Mahal from the gardens is a much nicer experience than walking up to the building up close. The story is nonetheless sweet. A husband grants his favorite wife’s dying wish to have something to memorialize the his love for her. And thus we have the Taj Mahal. It’s amazing what you can do with absurd amounts of wealth (about $827 million USD as of 2015)…