India - Day 4 - Agra
Our fourth day started out much as the others did - with car horns waking us before the sun.
We decided that breakfast might be a good idea, so down we headed to the lobby, to ask if they served breakfast in the hotel.
We were ushered into a strange little side room, the lights were flipped on, and a dude sitting there in the dark leapt into action to take our orders.
Breakfast in India was an odd thing, I found, as what they typically served me was what they called a Continental breakfast. Perhaps they eat that in Europe, but I have no idea. It would consist of tea, juice, and five or six slices of buttered bread with a kind of jam I'd never tasted before, and could only reasonably call fruit jam.
Emily, with her gluten issues, typically had tea, and had me eat her toast.
If you're guessing that I was sick of toast by the end of the trip, give yourself a gold star.
Mr. Singh showed up, and down the road we went.
The morning drive out of Jaipur was surprisingly pleasant.
There were hills with temples on them, wild dogs in the middle of the road, and a break an hour or so in so that our driver could have breakfast.
At the little roadside stand where he did that, Emily bought a bunch of Indian junk food, took photos, and we sampled it on the rest of the car ride. Sadly the Masala Magic Lays potato chips were not as awesome as I was hoping.
The drive was mostly countryside, whose nature was shattered by the two car accidents we saw on the way. The first appeared to be a guy in a ditch with three or so people helping him limp away from a ruined moped. Mr. Singh slowed down, pulled over, and when he saw that there was nothing he could do, he drove on. The second was a car that had jumped the barrier into oncoming traffic, rolled, and gone off the road into the grass. That time he stopped, told us to stay in the car, and went to help the people out of the wreck. People seemed to be okay.
When I asked him how in our drive from Delhi to Agra, on a much more heavily traveled road full of industrial vehicles we saw no accidents, but on this country freeway there were two in as many hours he responded "This road - every day - accident. Very dangerous."
Eventually after around three or so hours we found ourselves outside Agra at a fort called Fatehpur Sikri.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatehpur_Sikri
I first caught sight of it out of the car window, exclaimed something like "holy god!" and leaned back so that Emily could snap a shot of it.
We pulled off onto a side road, Mr. Singh stopped the car, honked, and a dude in a Kangol hat wearing a long sleeved shirt climbed in the car, and introduced himself as our guide. He had an awesomely raspy voice. I decided in my head then that he was the Indian version of Ghostface.
After parking the car in a lot, we walked through a little woodland area, past a series of shops and rest stops, and a guy with legs so twisted that I couldn't imagine how he got to where he was begging from, and caught a bus up the side of the hill to where the fortress was situated.
Some of the plants from the window almost looked like bougainvillaea, and I found myself wondering if it was, or just bore a remarkable similarity.
Up top we saw people hammering on stone working repairs on the wall of the fort.
We bought tickets from the kiosk, which had a sign stating that if you were of certain nationalities (Pakistani, Korean, and something else) you had to present your passport at the time of purchasing a ticket. No idea why.
We walked through the gates, and into a garden.
There our guide sat us down explained that the fort was built by the wise, though illiterate, king Akbar. He had three wives, each of whom he married for different reasons. One, the Muslim lady, for political reasons, the second, a Portuguese Christian woman, for economic reasons, and the third, a Hindu woman, for love. He built each of them a palace in the fort. He also mentioned that Akbar eliminated social practices that needed to go, namely women being forced onto their husband's funeral pyres, and people marrying children.
He then took us to look at a rock in the middle of the garden where people would be executed for their crimes by placing their head on the stone, and having an elephant step on their head.
I found myself wondering exactly how one trains an elephant to do that.
On the walk through the structure and the palaces we were shown a five story building, built in a pagoda style where the king would sit on hot days, and courtyard where he and his wives would play human parcheesi with his concubines (the flagstones were shaped so that they could). There was also a meeting hall where he a central pillar led up to a balcony area where the king would sit in judgment of people. The facade of the pillar was decorated in the artistic representations of all the faiths his wives held - lotus flowers for the Hindu, geometric patterns for the Muslim, and cross patterns for the Christian.
At one point we stopped by a building in the Hindu wife's section which our guide explained was a kitchen which she used to cook her vegetarian meals in.
He said it with such certainty that I was surprised to see a plaque next to it saying that most of what he had just stated was speculation.
He also showed us the Muslim wife's chambers, where, in defiance of Muslim practices, Akbar had the room engraved with the images of animals that his wife loved. Their faces have since been destroyed, so I'm guessing that at some point someone had a religious objection to his gesture.
We then walked down out of the complex, and along a side road to a Mosque complex. It was explained to me that I'd need to pull my shorts down a bit so that they covered my knees, and was therefore not disrespectful.
Our guide explained to us that the complex was built by Akbar to honor a Sufi mystic. Akbar, despite having three wives, had no children, and traveled the lands looking for help with this, and after being blessed by this wise man, Akbar had a son. After the man passed, a mausoleum was built, and to this day the only people buried on the grounds are holy people.
People make pilgrimages to the shrine to have their wishes granted, much like the king to this day.
He walked us through the complex to the merchants selling the materials. He explained to us that you bought cloth, flowers, and a piece of string. You laid the cloth across the tomb, sprinkled the petals upon it, and then tied your string around the lattice windows in three knots while making your wishes. At the end of the day, he said, all money from the purchases of the cloth went to the poor, and the cloth itself was sewn into clothes for the poor to wear.
Emily bought some cloth, and off we went. They gave me some string too.
After that we caught a bus back down to the parking lot, and we chatted with our guide about several things, namely our curiosity at the duality of cows in India. It was Emily who finally asked about the cognitive dissonance needed to both consider them a holy animal and use them as beasts of burden, but either our guide didn't get the question, or he thought we were idiots for seeing that as a problem. Not sure either way. Pretty much got told that the animal was sacred to Lakshmi, and that keeping it in your house was good luck, and that in southern India "crazy Hindus" eat them.
He also became the only person the entire time I was there to identify himself by his caste - Brahmin in his case.
Back at the car we dropped him off where we picked him up, and he told us that he was only the guide to the fort, but that there would be another guide in Agra.
Was sad to see him go. He was a close second to the dude that showed us around Jaipur.
We drove a bit before picking up our next guide who within about three minutes of climbing in the car had me convinced he was a douche. Don't know what it was about his mannerisms, his haircut, or the way he carried himself, but without saying a word in English, he had managed to convey that he was an ass.
Which was a shame, because he was our guide to the Taj Mahal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taj_Mahal
So, we pulled up through what was fairly clearly a tourist friendly area, and up to a gated area. He explained to us as we walked that fuel burning vehicles are only allowed a within a certain proximity to the Taj. He put us on a little electric bus, and off we went past camel drawn carriages and took-tooks. He then pushed us through the crowd, to the front of the ticket kiosk, where we were sold foreigner tickets.
He then took us to the side where he explained that our tickets came with complimentary bottles of water, and baggies to be worn over our shoes.
The outside complex to the Taj has multiple gates, and I believe we came in through the western gate. The entrances are separated by gender, and then separated further by foreigner and Indian. So, pretty much I was rushed past people standing in a massive queue for I don't know how long, to the front of the line, where our guide pushed about five people out of the queue for the metal detector, because they were standing in front of the one for foreign visitors.
At that point my douche suspicions were confirmed.
Made it through security, and started walking around the complex.
The three entrance gates are then funneled through the entry gate, which we were told was intended to symbolize the separation of the physical from the spiritual.
Inside that gate there's a massive chandelier brought via boat from... Hungary, I think? Anyhow, it was hung there when they found that candles were damaging the stonework.
I honestly was paying more attention to the fact that I was staring over a crowd at the Taj Mahal.
Our guide explained how Shah Jahan's wife, on her deathbed, asked him to build a monument to their love. Clearly he decided to trump any gesture anyone else would make ever.
He told us that the stone was brought from Jaipur via elephant, that the 22 domes on the building represent the number of years it took to build (as well as the 22 thousand workers used to build it, or something, but I can't imagine that that's accurate, so much as something made up to sound providential).
We wound our ways through the crowd, while periodically he would argue with people while taking pictures of the two of us when they'd get in the way of his shot.
He stopped and pointed out a spot where Princess Diana had her photo taken on a bench, and told us that since then people have been calling it Diana's bench. I responded as I do to pretty much all trivia about the royal family: by not giving a fuck.
As we got past the gardens we were told to put on our booties, before we started walking on the marble.
Other people had to take their shoes off. How they managed to walk on red hot stone barefoot, I don't know.
We joined the masses heading inside, and as we waited, our guide explained that the inlaid stonework was still practiced by local artisans, and that the pillars are all tilted at very slight angles (I think he said 4 degrees) away from the main complex, so that in the event of an earthquake they'd fall away from it.
I asked him about the writing around the structure, and he told me it was Arabic. I asked if it was passages from the Koran, since that seemed like a good bet to me. He told me that they were. I waited for an elaboration, y'know, what they said, why they were chosen, etc, but nothing was forthcoming.
He explained to us that inside the tomb that pictures were forbidden, though the tombs were replicas, and that the real ones were below us. He then went on to tell us that the Taj was designed with the plan to hold the entirety of the royal family, but Shah Jahan decided after it was built that it was just going to be for his wife.
Apparently he was intending on building a second Taj for himself across the river, called the Black Taj. He got a short way into building it before his son imprisoned him - apparently to keep him from spending more funds on another Taj.
You can see it from the back side of the Taj, along with the tent city across the river.
After that we caught our breath in the shade. There were some other parts to the area - I think one of the buildings was a mosque, but there was a second that we walked by, looked at, and never had explained to us.
We went out on a took-took that the driver had a hard time getting fired up, so for a bit there he was pushing all of us. Our guide told us how much to pay him, and then had an argument with him.
We got back in the car, and drove to a restaurant where we had a fairly unremarkable lunch.
About the only thing of note was that it was by the Hotel Kant, which I kept wanting to get a picture of for Matt.
After lunch we drove to the Red Fort.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agra_Fort
The fort was gorgeous, and after entering, it was explained that we were only going to get to see part of it, because the Indian army is still using part of it.
Our guide was becoming less and less informative as the day went on, so I'm not really sure who built it, and when I asked about the damage done to it from what looked like attacks, I was informed that it was done by "stupid men."
It was here that Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his son, which Emily and I debated as either remarkably kind, or astoundingly cruel, as from his balcony you have an amazing view of the Taj Mahal.
About the only things I took away from it, aside from it being beautiful was that the entrance way was lined with windows that were either filled with musicians to welcome guests, or dudes with boiling oil to welcome attackers. There was a massive ramp into the main complex, which was designed to make attack via elephant difficult, and had acoustic properties that amplified noise, thereby making a sneak attack equally difficult.
There was a throne we sat on to have our picture taken, which at one point a cannon ball bounced off of, and smashed into the wall beside it. You can still see the hole it made.
At some point they also minted coins there, and one of the gardens used to be a pond where people used to have competitions to shoot fish with a bow & arrow.
At one point I asked the guide about the number of archways generally being three in number, and whether that was symbolic of an important number in Islam. He told me that "three is an important number in Islam." And that was the end of that conversation.
After that we headed to our new hotel, and crashed.
We decided that breakfast might be a good idea, so down we headed to the lobby, to ask if they served breakfast in the hotel.
We were ushered into a strange little side room, the lights were flipped on, and a dude sitting there in the dark leapt into action to take our orders.
Breakfast in India was an odd thing, I found, as what they typically served me was what they called a Continental breakfast. Perhaps they eat that in Europe, but I have no idea. It would consist of tea, juice, and five or six slices of buttered bread with a kind of jam I'd never tasted before, and could only reasonably call fruit jam.
Emily, with her gluten issues, typically had tea, and had me eat her toast.
If you're guessing that I was sick of toast by the end of the trip, give yourself a gold star.
Mr. Singh showed up, and down the road we went.
The morning drive out of Jaipur was surprisingly pleasant.
There were hills with temples on them, wild dogs in the middle of the road, and a break an hour or so in so that our driver could have breakfast.
At the little roadside stand where he did that, Emily bought a bunch of Indian junk food, took photos, and we sampled it on the rest of the car ride. Sadly the Masala Magic Lays potato chips were not as awesome as I was hoping.
The drive was mostly countryside, whose nature was shattered by the two car accidents we saw on the way. The first appeared to be a guy in a ditch with three or so people helping him limp away from a ruined moped. Mr. Singh slowed down, pulled over, and when he saw that there was nothing he could do, he drove on. The second was a car that had jumped the barrier into oncoming traffic, rolled, and gone off the road into the grass. That time he stopped, told us to stay in the car, and went to help the people out of the wreck. People seemed to be okay.
When I asked him how in our drive from Delhi to Agra, on a much more heavily traveled road full of industrial vehicles we saw no accidents, but on this country freeway there were two in as many hours he responded "This road - every day - accident. Very dangerous."
Eventually after around three or so hours we found ourselves outside Agra at a fort called Fatehpur Sikri.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatehpur_Sikri
I first caught sight of it out of the car window, exclaimed something like "holy god!" and leaned back so that Emily could snap a shot of it.
We pulled off onto a side road, Mr. Singh stopped the car, honked, and a dude in a Kangol hat wearing a long sleeved shirt climbed in the car, and introduced himself as our guide. He had an awesomely raspy voice. I decided in my head then that he was the Indian version of Ghostface.
After parking the car in a lot, we walked through a little woodland area, past a series of shops and rest stops, and a guy with legs so twisted that I couldn't imagine how he got to where he was begging from, and caught a bus up the side of the hill to where the fortress was situated.
Some of the plants from the window almost looked like bougainvillaea, and I found myself wondering if it was, or just bore a remarkable similarity.
Up top we saw people hammering on stone working repairs on the wall of the fort.
We bought tickets from the kiosk, which had a sign stating that if you were of certain nationalities (Pakistani, Korean, and something else) you had to present your passport at the time of purchasing a ticket. No idea why.
We walked through the gates, and into a garden.
There our guide sat us down explained that the fort was built by the wise, though illiterate, king Akbar. He had three wives, each of whom he married for different reasons. One, the Muslim lady, for political reasons, the second, a Portuguese Christian woman, for economic reasons, and the third, a Hindu woman, for love. He built each of them a palace in the fort. He also mentioned that Akbar eliminated social practices that needed to go, namely women being forced onto their husband's funeral pyres, and people marrying children.
He then took us to look at a rock in the middle of the garden where people would be executed for their crimes by placing their head on the stone, and having an elephant step on their head.
I found myself wondering exactly how one trains an elephant to do that.
On the walk through the structure and the palaces we were shown a five story building, built in a pagoda style where the king would sit on hot days, and courtyard where he and his wives would play human parcheesi with his concubines (the flagstones were shaped so that they could). There was also a meeting hall where he a central pillar led up to a balcony area where the king would sit in judgment of people. The facade of the pillar was decorated in the artistic representations of all the faiths his wives held - lotus flowers for the Hindu, geometric patterns for the Muslim, and cross patterns for the Christian.
At one point we stopped by a building in the Hindu wife's section which our guide explained was a kitchen which she used to cook her vegetarian meals in.
He said it with such certainty that I was surprised to see a plaque next to it saying that most of what he had just stated was speculation.
He also showed us the Muslim wife's chambers, where, in defiance of Muslim practices, Akbar had the room engraved with the images of animals that his wife loved. Their faces have since been destroyed, so I'm guessing that at some point someone had a religious objection to his gesture.
We then walked down out of the complex, and along a side road to a Mosque complex. It was explained to me that I'd need to pull my shorts down a bit so that they covered my knees, and was therefore not disrespectful.
Our guide explained to us that the complex was built by Akbar to honor a Sufi mystic. Akbar, despite having three wives, had no children, and traveled the lands looking for help with this, and after being blessed by this wise man, Akbar had a son. After the man passed, a mausoleum was built, and to this day the only people buried on the grounds are holy people.
People make pilgrimages to the shrine to have their wishes granted, much like the king to this day.
He walked us through the complex to the merchants selling the materials. He explained to us that you bought cloth, flowers, and a piece of string. You laid the cloth across the tomb, sprinkled the petals upon it, and then tied your string around the lattice windows in three knots while making your wishes. At the end of the day, he said, all money from the purchases of the cloth went to the poor, and the cloth itself was sewn into clothes for the poor to wear.
Emily bought some cloth, and off we went. They gave me some string too.
After that we caught a bus back down to the parking lot, and we chatted with our guide about several things, namely our curiosity at the duality of cows in India. It was Emily who finally asked about the cognitive dissonance needed to both consider them a holy animal and use them as beasts of burden, but either our guide didn't get the question, or he thought we were idiots for seeing that as a problem. Not sure either way. Pretty much got told that the animal was sacred to Lakshmi, and that keeping it in your house was good luck, and that in southern India "crazy Hindus" eat them.
He also became the only person the entire time I was there to identify himself by his caste - Brahmin in his case.
Back at the car we dropped him off where we picked him up, and he told us that he was only the guide to the fort, but that there would be another guide in Agra.
Was sad to see him go. He was a close second to the dude that showed us around Jaipur.
We drove a bit before picking up our next guide who within about three minutes of climbing in the car had me convinced he was a douche. Don't know what it was about his mannerisms, his haircut, or the way he carried himself, but without saying a word in English, he had managed to convey that he was an ass.
Which was a shame, because he was our guide to the Taj Mahal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taj_Mahal
So, we pulled up through what was fairly clearly a tourist friendly area, and up to a gated area. He explained to us as we walked that fuel burning vehicles are only allowed a within a certain proximity to the Taj. He put us on a little electric bus, and off we went past camel drawn carriages and took-tooks. He then pushed us through the crowd, to the front of the ticket kiosk, where we were sold foreigner tickets.
He then took us to the side where he explained that our tickets came with complimentary bottles of water, and baggies to be worn over our shoes.
The outside complex to the Taj has multiple gates, and I believe we came in through the western gate. The entrances are separated by gender, and then separated further by foreigner and Indian. So, pretty much I was rushed past people standing in a massive queue for I don't know how long, to the front of the line, where our guide pushed about five people out of the queue for the metal detector, because they were standing in front of the one for foreign visitors.
At that point my douche suspicions were confirmed.
Made it through security, and started walking around the complex.
The three entrance gates are then funneled through the entry gate, which we were told was intended to symbolize the separation of the physical from the spiritual.
Inside that gate there's a massive chandelier brought via boat from... Hungary, I think? Anyhow, it was hung there when they found that candles were damaging the stonework.
I honestly was paying more attention to the fact that I was staring over a crowd at the Taj Mahal.
Our guide explained how Shah Jahan's wife, on her deathbed, asked him to build a monument to their love. Clearly he decided to trump any gesture anyone else would make ever.
He told us that the stone was brought from Jaipur via elephant, that the 22 domes on the building represent the number of years it took to build (as well as the 22 thousand workers used to build it, or something, but I can't imagine that that's accurate, so much as something made up to sound providential).
We wound our ways through the crowd, while periodically he would argue with people while taking pictures of the two of us when they'd get in the way of his shot.
He stopped and pointed out a spot where Princess Diana had her photo taken on a bench, and told us that since then people have been calling it Diana's bench. I responded as I do to pretty much all trivia about the royal family: by not giving a fuck.
As we got past the gardens we were told to put on our booties, before we started walking on the marble.
Other people had to take their shoes off. How they managed to walk on red hot stone barefoot, I don't know.
We joined the masses heading inside, and as we waited, our guide explained that the inlaid stonework was still practiced by local artisans, and that the pillars are all tilted at very slight angles (I think he said 4 degrees) away from the main complex, so that in the event of an earthquake they'd fall away from it.
I asked him about the writing around the structure, and he told me it was Arabic. I asked if it was passages from the Koran, since that seemed like a good bet to me. He told me that they were. I waited for an elaboration, y'know, what they said, why they were chosen, etc, but nothing was forthcoming.
He explained to us that inside the tomb that pictures were forbidden, though the tombs were replicas, and that the real ones were below us. He then went on to tell us that the Taj was designed with the plan to hold the entirety of the royal family, but Shah Jahan decided after it was built that it was just going to be for his wife.
Apparently he was intending on building a second Taj for himself across the river, called the Black Taj. He got a short way into building it before his son imprisoned him - apparently to keep him from spending more funds on another Taj.
You can see it from the back side of the Taj, along with the tent city across the river.
After that we caught our breath in the shade. There were some other parts to the area - I think one of the buildings was a mosque, but there was a second that we walked by, looked at, and never had explained to us.
We went out on a took-took that the driver had a hard time getting fired up, so for a bit there he was pushing all of us. Our guide told us how much to pay him, and then had an argument with him.
We got back in the car, and drove to a restaurant where we had a fairly unremarkable lunch.
About the only thing of note was that it was by the Hotel Kant, which I kept wanting to get a picture of for Matt.
After lunch we drove to the Red Fort.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agra_Fort
The fort was gorgeous, and after entering, it was explained that we were only going to get to see part of it, because the Indian army is still using part of it.
Our guide was becoming less and less informative as the day went on, so I'm not really sure who built it, and when I asked about the damage done to it from what looked like attacks, I was informed that it was done by "stupid men."
It was here that Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his son, which Emily and I debated as either remarkably kind, or astoundingly cruel, as from his balcony you have an amazing view of the Taj Mahal.
About the only things I took away from it, aside from it being beautiful was that the entrance way was lined with windows that were either filled with musicians to welcome guests, or dudes with boiling oil to welcome attackers. There was a massive ramp into the main complex, which was designed to make attack via elephant difficult, and had acoustic properties that amplified noise, thereby making a sneak attack equally difficult.
There was a throne we sat on to have our picture taken, which at one point a cannon ball bounced off of, and smashed into the wall beside it. You can still see the hole it made.
At some point they also minted coins there, and one of the gardens used to be a pond where people used to have competitions to shoot fish with a bow & arrow.
At one point I asked the guide about the number of archways generally being three in number, and whether that was symbolic of an important number in Islam. He told me that "three is an important number in Islam." And that was the end of that conversation.
After that we headed to our new hotel, and crashed.