Delhi to Agra

January 27, 2012

Breakfast at Le Meridien is a sumptuous buffet: an omelet station, 7 kinds of fresh squeezed juices, a mix of Indian and Western selections plus pastries plus fruit smoothies. Yum! 

Sanjay awaits with cold bottles of water all around. The drive to Agra will take several hours. It’s not so much the mileage but the condition of the roads and the snarly traffic. Sanjay negotiates it all with expertise. The actual mileage is 130 miles and the drive takes us about 5 hours.

Between Delhi and Agra

As we leave Delhi, here on the outskirts of the city, I get a glimpse of the slums we hear so much about and they are truly awful. Dirt is the thing that comes immediately to mind. The slums mean living in dirt with no chance to be clean. Dust choked blankets make the walls of dirt floored hovels which are planted in the dirt. The grime is everywhere, breathable, touchable, and entrenched. Lean-tos crowd together holding one another upright. And then they are in the rear view mirror and their image is mine to keep.

The drive is long but the ever unfolding tableaux of roadside life serves as the in-flight movie. Bicycles transport everything. A steel girder, skyscraper sized? Certainly. A tree trunk balanced on a woman’s shoulder? Why not? Innovation and determination are the rule for this transportation system and no one blinks an eye.

Where there's a will there's a way

An occasional herd of goats in all sizes and colors courses along the roadside in an undulating stream. Their herder walks behind them with a staff, but they don’t seem to need him. They appear to know where they’re going.

Claire in her car seat alternates between asleep and awake. Sometimes vocalizing like the sweetest cat on the back fence. We stop when necessary so she can eat and when Sanjay stops at a roadside restaurant/gift shop we aren’t hungry enough to order so we browse through the over-priced inventory and make a mental list of things we’ll look for later. (We get our first glimpse of Aladdin type shoes with curled toes).

On the outskirts of Agra, Sanjay stops at Akbar’s Tomb. Akbar planned his own tomb, another edifice of red sandstone and white marble, but died before its completion. His son finished it up. There is an enormous entry gate, decorated with floral and geometric designs and topped on each of four corners with a white marble minaret. Inside, a garden of lawn and trees, where deer with curly horns mingle with white cranes, separates the gate from the tomb itself. The tomb is magnificent, rising 5 stories high and decorated with inlaid designs, truly a fitting resting place for Akbar the Great. Several gnarly tree trunks are replete with stretched out squirrels sunning themselves in a vertical position along the warm wood.

The Gate of Akbar's Tomb

Sunbathing Squirrels

Deer

Akbar's Tomb

Our hotel is the Wyndham and it is grand. We are greeted with fresh fragrant marigold leis, Claire included, in the two-storied balconied lobby. Our room is not yet ready so we opt for lunch in the enormous lobby at the second tier café. A lamb kabob wrap for me. We walk through a gorgeous interior garden to reach our room. Several fountains spray mist into the air and we spot what we think are kumquat trees hung with small orange globes of fruit.

Marigold Lei

Kumquat Tree?

After lunch and a short break we meet Mickey, our guide and he takes us to Agra Fort, also known as the Red Fort of Agra.

Babur, Humayun and Akbar all utilized this imposing fort, (really a huge walled city), Akbar was the one who recognized its strategic importance and made it his capital. He spent 8 years building and refurbishing. His grandson, Shah Jahan added many of its embellishments including a white marble temple. Three moats surround the walls, one contained starving crocodiles, one was planted in jungle where dangerous animals lived, the third? Just water, I guess. In the thick trees of the jungle moat today, we see bright green parakeets flitting from branch to branch. We enter through the Amar Singh gate and walk up an elephant ramp. The ramp is an important part of the fort’s defenses. If invaders started to climb the ramp, boiling oil or water was poured down on them and huge boulders could be rolled down like balls in a slanted bowling alley.

Elephant Ramp

The huge fort holds courtyards and marble pavilions. The walls in the pavilions are hollow and were filled with water to cool or heat the rooms. (The fort is on the banks of the Yamuna River so the minions didn’t have too dreadfully far to carry the water. There were 250 people assigned to carry water and that’s all they did). In one of the pavilions, Akbar held court. The common people could come and sit in the courtyard and ask him to solve their problems. In another pavilion if you stand in one corner and speak softly a person standing in the opposite corner can hear you clearly. In the center of one long narrow room there used to hang a heavy carpet. Slave girls pulled it back and forth to fan the royal women.

Empty Moat

Can you see The Taj?

Inside Agra Fort

Inside Agra Fort

We sit on Akbar’s outdoor throne cut from black marble. There is a mark to one side of the platform where an errant cannonball struck and then bounced creating a divot in the adjacent wall. Oops!

Seventy percent of the fort is utilized today by the Indian Army. We weren’t told directly, but they’ve destroyed much of the historic site to build barracks.

Akbar's Throne

Taj From the Street

 Shah Jahan had the Taj Mahal built as a tomb for his beloved second wife, Mumtaz. Evidently he became obsessed with the idea of building a second taj for his own tomb and his son imprisoned him in order to stop the project. He was kept seemingly benignly under house arrest for 8 years until his death. He could stand on a marble balcony in the tower where he was confined and see the Taj in the distance. We were excited to see it too. Our first real glimpse was from the street, but this is an opportunity to really gaze at it off in the distance.

Mickey shows us a tunnel leading from the fort to the Taj a little over a mile away. He suggests it is probably inhabited with snakes and scorpions these days. 

Back at the hotel Claire and I send Jake and Lesley off to dinner. The fountains are spewing colored water thanks to flood lighting. An Indian wedding is in full swing in one part of the garden with music, strings of lights, a cloque hatted chef and mobs of people. Fireworks explode in the sky in another quadrant where a dance show is underway in the balmy night.