The North Part II: Agra

I arrived in Agra around midday, having slept most of the morning away on the train. I found a hotel to stay in near the Taj Mahal. The train station is across town from the hotel, and my first glimpse of the Taj was from the rickshaw on the drive over. After you see it for the first time, there is a sort of magnetic attraction. No matter where you are in the city, thereafter you find yourself wondering, “I wonder if I can see the Taj from here?”

I spent that afternoon seeing things other than the Taj Mahal, electing to save it for early the next morning. I visited the Agra Fort, which was built prior to the Delhi fort by Akbar the Great. It was later added on to by Shah Jahan, who also built the Taj Mahal, before he decided to move the capital to Delhi! After erecting some of the most beautiful buildings in the world, he decided he would rather be in a different city. Craziness. The Agra Fort has the same massive sandstone walls as the Red Fort in Delhi, but the palaces on the interior are a bit richer in detail and better preserved. The palaces here were one of the first places that the Mughals experimented with covering sandstone with white marble, producing beautiful results. Some of the palaces here also represent a pushing of the envelope in decoration. The floral patterns might have been scandalous given the Islamic proscription on figurative decoration. The palaces with this aesthetic were built by Hindu craftsmen during the reign of Akbar. Akbar was religiously tolerant and hold the craftsmen back from the artistic stylings that came naturally to them.

I spent the afternoon walking around the city. I’m happy to report that, the Yamuna River is crawling with monkeys! I spent a good while just sitting and watching them. Fittingly, there is also a shrine there to the monkey god.

That evening I had a thali (a preset menu dinner with rice, dal, a vegetable, and bread) in a restaurant. I shared a table with an older man who had lived in Agra his whole life. He told me that when he was a kid, they used to go see the Taj Mahal for free and there was no security. He also told me that Agra used to be a major industrial city. Unfortunately, the pollution was discoloring the Taj, so the national government shut down all the factories, leaving thousands of workers out of jobs. The result has been an enormous growth in ancillary tourist industries. In almost every city in India it is easy to find rickshaws and there are people trying to sell trinkets. In Agra the number of tourist sales pitches is at a whole new level. I couldn’t walk more than 10 feet without being offered a rickshaw ride to anywhere, a guided tour of the whole city, a set of postcards, a keychain, and a Taj Mahal snow globe (why do these exist, it doesn’t snow there).

The next morning I woke up about 4 am to see the Taj Mahal. The hotel I was staying at had a rooftop balcony with a view, so I watched the sunrise over the Taj from there. Then, at 6 am, I packed my bag and walked over to the Taj. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

From the rooftop...

The elaborate gate (actually a gate within the outer walls)...

The first view of it from within the walls

Border of gold and silver

More precious stones

In the afternoon, I met I was crashing from having woken up so early. I was about to lay down for a nap in a park when a group of guys approached me. They were masters’ students in life sciences and were from Kashmir. I ended up spending the whole afternoon with them, beating the heat in a bar. We really hit it off and they are now lobbying me quite hard to visit them in Jammu. I think it will have to wait until the next time I am here though as things have been getting especially heated there in recent weeks. That evening, exhausted after spending the whole afternoon in a bar, I boarded my train to Jaipur. I was asleep within minutes.