Overland trek 19: Agra
Agra was about 5 hours by bus south from Delhi. We travelled through somewhat dusty countryside - a decade later the road apparently traversed an industrial belt, but it wasn't so in 1970. Agra itself was not very enticing, but just outside the town there are two major attractions the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort.
One has seen so many pictures of the Taj that one thinks one knows it already. I was prepared to be quite underwhelmed, but that wasn't the case at all. It is a stunningly beautiful building in a way that cannot be captured in photos at all. First of all, it gleams and shimmers - white in the haze. I didn't think much about the haze - coming from a dry part of Australia where the clarity of the air is something visitors always comment on, I'd begun to get used to the haze in Asia. I was told it was just humidity that reduced the field of vision. Nowadays I hear that the marble of the Taj is being eaten by pollution, so I'm not really sure whether the haze was actually humidity or was air pollution. Anyway there was a particular quality of the light around the building that gave its whiteness an extra presence.
Inside, I don't recall having previously seen pictures of the interior, but there are some here, the atmosphere is light. I'm not sure if the marble is translucent, or if the effect is achieved by reflection of light on white stone and there is also so much intricate lacework in the stone that light penetrates every corner. Normally stone buildings can be quite gloomy inside. Not so with the Taj. The marble is inlaid with coloured stones. If my memory is right there is the tomb of Shah Jahan's wife Mumtaz Mahal in the centre under the dome, in a marble-lacework cage (my memory is wrong, the there are two tombs - and I presume the bigger one is for the husband, even if the monument was built for her!). The mind boggles at such delicate stonemasonry. The complex of buildings, including the four minarets at each corner, took 21 years and employed thousands of artisans.
In the photos, you always see the front view with the long mirror pool, which is stunning enough. Out the back you overlook dusty Indian countryside with a river meandering through it. The usual crows and cows. Well it was dry and brown in April 1970.
We were always comparing these great buildings that we'd seen on our travels. The Taj Mahal was a winner from the point of view of its delicacy and aesthetic qualities. But I think we three agreed that Angkor remained number one. In retrospect - from a very long distance - I think we voted for Angkor on account of its life. The Muslim architecture of the Taj Mahal was all decorative. The sculptures and reliefs at Angkor were about life - markets, war, slaves, food, animals, spirituality, power. The Taj was beautiful in a pretty way; Angkor was both beautiful and impressive (and not only due to its greater size). Still the Taj remains one of the top three from the trip, along with Angkor and Borobodur.
We went straight to the Taj in the afternoon of our arrival from Delhi. We stayed overnight in an unmemorable hotel in Agra, on a street where everything was 3-5 storey concrete with advertising boards, and went out to the Red Fort next day. I remember the Red Fort as being vast and incoherent. It was quite different from the Taj Mahal that shimmered whitely in the haze on the plain below. The red-brown sandstone blended more with the surrounding dryness, but inside the walls it seemed all bitsy with different kinds of stone. It had nothing of the lightness of the Taj. Unlike the Taj, it was also higher up, on a hill, and from the battlements you could look down on the plain. Visibility was restricted by the haze however. Parts of it were fairly ruined, though if I look at the current Wikipedia page, this doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe I just had Mughal architecture fatigue - that is, maybe the decorativeness of the decoration impressed me less than it should have. Maybe it was just less beautiful than the Taj. Or maybe it was tarted up for World Heritage listing in 1983 and we just didn't see it at its best. I don't know. I just don't remember that much about the Agra Fort.
I would advise travellers to Agra to visit the Red Fort first. It is less likely to be a disappointment than if you've already been to the Taj Mahal.
We contemplated going to Fatehpur Sikri, an entire city built and then abandoned after 14 years in the late 16th century by Akbar, the same Moghul who built the Red Fort at Agra and an ancestor of Shah Jahan. It is 40 km to the west of Agra. In hindsight, I have a tendency to blame my two travelling companions for not wanting to go there, for wanting to get back on the overland route (as indeed they did). I'm not sure that they are entirely to blame if I take into consideration my apparent Mughal architecture fatigue at the Red Fort.
So in the afternoon of day 2 we went back to Delhi. At this point, however, I can clearly say that my fellow travellers outvoted me on where we should go next. I wanted to go to Khajuraho - a bit over 600 km to the south of Delhi. My companions were certainly interested in it, but not enough to deter them from getting to London asap. Instead of diving deeper into India then, we headed 300 km north to Chandigarh, on the way to the Pakistan border.
One has seen so many pictures of the Taj that one thinks one knows it already. I was prepared to be quite underwhelmed, but that wasn't the case at all. It is a stunningly beautiful building in a way that cannot be captured in photos at all. First of all, it gleams and shimmers - white in the haze. I didn't think much about the haze - coming from a dry part of Australia where the clarity of the air is something visitors always comment on, I'd begun to get used to the haze in Asia. I was told it was just humidity that reduced the field of vision. Nowadays I hear that the marble of the Taj is being eaten by pollution, so I'm not really sure whether the haze was actually humidity or was air pollution. Anyway there was a particular quality of the light around the building that gave its whiteness an extra presence.
Inside, I don't recall having previously seen pictures of the interior, but there are some here, the atmosphere is light. I'm not sure if the marble is translucent, or if the effect is achieved by reflection of light on white stone and there is also so much intricate lacework in the stone that light penetrates every corner. Normally stone buildings can be quite gloomy inside. Not so with the Taj. The marble is inlaid with coloured stones. If my memory is right there is the tomb of Shah Jahan's wife Mumtaz Mahal in the centre under the dome, in a marble-lacework cage (my memory is wrong, the there are two tombs - and I presume the bigger one is for the husband, even if the monument was built for her!). The mind boggles at such delicate stonemasonry. The complex of buildings, including the four minarets at each corner, took 21 years and employed thousands of artisans.
In the photos, you always see the front view with the long mirror pool, which is stunning enough. Out the back you overlook dusty Indian countryside with a river meandering through it. The usual crows and cows. Well it was dry and brown in April 1970.
We were always comparing these great buildings that we'd seen on our travels. The Taj Mahal was a winner from the point of view of its delicacy and aesthetic qualities. But I think we three agreed that Angkor remained number one. In retrospect - from a very long distance - I think we voted for Angkor on account of its life. The Muslim architecture of the Taj Mahal was all decorative. The sculptures and reliefs at Angkor were about life - markets, war, slaves, food, animals, spirituality, power. The Taj was beautiful in a pretty way; Angkor was both beautiful and impressive (and not only due to its greater size). Still the Taj remains one of the top three from the trip, along with Angkor and Borobodur.
We went straight to the Taj in the afternoon of our arrival from Delhi. We stayed overnight in an unmemorable hotel in Agra, on a street where everything was 3-5 storey concrete with advertising boards, and went out to the Red Fort next day. I remember the Red Fort as being vast and incoherent. It was quite different from the Taj Mahal that shimmered whitely in the haze on the plain below. The red-brown sandstone blended more with the surrounding dryness, but inside the walls it seemed all bitsy with different kinds of stone. It had nothing of the lightness of the Taj. Unlike the Taj, it was also higher up, on a hill, and from the battlements you could look down on the plain. Visibility was restricted by the haze however. Parts of it were fairly ruined, though if I look at the current Wikipedia page, this doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe I just had Mughal architecture fatigue - that is, maybe the decorativeness of the decoration impressed me less than it should have. Maybe it was just less beautiful than the Taj. Or maybe it was tarted up for World Heritage listing in 1983 and we just didn't see it at its best. I don't know. I just don't remember that much about the Agra Fort.
I would advise travellers to Agra to visit the Red Fort first. It is less likely to be a disappointment than if you've already been to the Taj Mahal.
We contemplated going to Fatehpur Sikri, an entire city built and then abandoned after 14 years in the late 16th century by Akbar, the same Moghul who built the Red Fort at Agra and an ancestor of Shah Jahan. It is 40 km to the west of Agra. In hindsight, I have a tendency to blame my two travelling companions for not wanting to go there, for wanting to get back on the overland route (as indeed they did). I'm not sure that they are entirely to blame if I take into consideration my apparent Mughal architecture fatigue at the Red Fort.
So in the afternoon of day 2 we went back to Delhi. At this point, however, I can clearly say that my fellow travellers outvoted me on where we should go next. I wanted to go to Khajuraho - a bit over 600 km to the south of Delhi. My companions were certainly interested in it, but not enough to deter them from getting to London asap. Instead of diving deeper into India then, we headed 300 km north to Chandigarh, on the way to the Pakistan border.