While the guide book, in fact any guide book, will say, "get to Agra, see the Taj, see the fort, then get the hell out of there", we had an altogether different experience. The original intention was to stay three nights and two days in the city, taking in the Taj and Fort during that time. In the end we stayed 4 nights and 4 days.
I think one of the principle reasons we opted to do this was because of the accommodation we had gone for. Jes, bless her had managed to get another reservation at the ITC Mughal, formally called the Taj Ganj. It is simply the best hotel in Agra, by a long shot. This post will best be done chronologically so look ahead to, dinner at Peshwari's, Fort and baby Taj, Futephur Sikri and finally, the Taj Mahal.
Dinner was taken at Peshwari on our first night. We'd heard about the world class cuisine through the SPG website and looked forward to it. We were not disappointed. The attention was delightful, the cuisine delicious, the service impecable and experience highly memorable. We tried a mix of breads, gravies and kebabs, essentially spicey vegetable mixes pressed onto a metal rod and cooked in a tandoori.
The following morning we headed for Fort, an enormous structure in Agra that housed a whole load of folk through the ages. It has weather well considering the plundering by various invaders. Difficult to describe it in it's entireity, well, more like impossible, let's just say that it was very impressive, very large, hard to attack and proved a rather nice place for the garrison of British soldiers and colonial groupies to hang out in during the 1857 uprising. It was built by with the intention of having a good view of the Taj Mahal, which it does from it's southern aspect.
More like a palace than a fort, there is considerable luxury within. Courtyards, ornate buildings, fgabulously attractive works of masionary. During it's heyday I can only imagine how amazing it would have looked.
Oddly, there remains this piece of history in one of the rooms. Enlarge the image below, then the particular door it refers to is given below that. How much truth there is to it I have no idea.
And the door.
To give you some idea of the creativity and architecture of the day you only have to look at some of the elaborate arches. In the one below, the columns are designed such that from the King's seating area high on the back wall, there would be no place that would act as a blind spot. Some say it was to defer would be assassins, but others say that Akbar's court was civil, and this location was for the people to hear him. The configuration gives a very good view of his highness.
In short, Agra Fort is pretty breathtaking, as much so as the Taj Mahal in my opinion.
So, that brings me to the baby Taj, as it is referred to. The baby Taj is the tomb of Shah Jahan's mother, and although not as elaborate as the big one, it is in itself very beautiful. Because the crowds are pulled elsewhere in Agra, it is also far more peaceful. It does not take too long to walk around and fortunately there are not the usual hawkers insisting that you should by some gaudy piece of tat. Actually, I do them false, they are rarely gaudy, and rarely tat, it's just it is the same at every sight, gets a bit tedious.
The baby Taj has the same exquisite inlaying of precious and semi-precious stones in the marble and unlike the Taj, it is more visible as more light is able to enter the mausoleum.
This is not paint but inlaying that requires very careful chiselling and precise grinding of each individual stone to fit the precisely created space. We got a class in how this is done later in the day.
After the baby Taj we were taken over the Black Taj. I say Black Taj but it isn't really, it would have been had it ever been built but all that one can see is the remenants of the foundation in black marble. You have to pay to enter, we didn't, instead following the Indians down to the river's edge for a near sunset view of the Taj Mahal, whetting our lips for a couple of days time.
Met a few of the indigenous livestock on the way.
Agra as a city is a sprawl with limited development in the way of malls and high rises. It is very medieval in feel with bazzars forming the cornerstone of the shopping and each area lending itself to particular specialities. In the south there is a predominance of textiles and jewellery, in the centre it seems more grocery orientated and around the periphery a mixture but much residential. We were fortunate to commondere the services of Bablu and Guppu when we first arrived on the train and despite needing to absorb some of our time in craftshops on their behalf, they proved very useful. For a start we desperately needed to do our laundry and although the hotel would gladly oblige, it would have set us back a great deal of money. For perspective, a pair of socks was $2 and a t-shirt $6. We had about 30 pieces to wash and by heading to the local laundry man was spent a tenner instead of $150. Guppu particularly provided us with useful information on each of the sites. Not just of the tourist attractions, but of the way to deal with the touts. In particular, keep ticket stubs, ignore the need for guides, how to negotiate a good price. What was also really humbling was Guppu's invite to a family function to celebrate his cousin's children's first Ramadan fasting. We were made to feel most welcome while we ate chicken biriyani and mutton curry.
Of course the kids loved Rin.
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