The Temple of Love
The drive from Delhi to Agra was unexciting, generally. The guest house was really, really nice and made us up ...coleslaw?... sandwiches that tasted like salt and pepper. They were really good (v. intense), and I had them for breakfast. The driver went ridiculously fast on the almost empty mornings roads and we got there in four hours. He was chewing this stuff that he'd need to spit out every so often, but Charlie said that the MIT kids said that this was, in fact, not chewing tobacco but something much stronger. I was skeptical (what other drugs do you chew and spit?) but was later to be surprised.
Animals we passed on the highway:
Camels towing things
Horses towing things
Donkeys towing things
Cows, just chillin'
The sky was overcast, so it wasn't hot. At the Taj Mahal we were greeted with a ginormous swarm of vendors, and acquired a guide with a good accent and large reflective sunglasses. It was impressive and beautiful, although I mentioned that it's cost was really borne by the country and laborers, not the Shah who commissioned it, so it's really less of a temple of love than a huge economic rent. (But really. It's amazing and the design is really impressive. I've never seen anything like it, even in the East. And it's so PRETTY, which was something lacking in my China trips. They were more about sheer age and massiveness. Or else everything was too old and worn to still be pretty).
Mm. Then we went to Agra Fort, which was actually more interesting. It's a giant palace for the Moguls and I didn't realize how complicated the layout was until we got lost; everyone just kept adding to it, sort of on whim (it seems). I love how one king would be like, hm, I want a life-size Parcheesi board where I will use my concubines as pieces, build it. The walls are hollow so they can be filled with water (they're about a foot and a half thick on the outside layer) as heat sinks. What you can do with infinite money!
And of course everything was really, really pretty. We came into the fort where everything is sandstone (Akbar's work), and you wander along all these rooms and passageways and suddenly everything is blinding white marble. There are floral patterns of semi-precious stones inlaid in the marble and the walkways are all built of tessellated shapes. There's also this repeating rhombus pattern on the inside of the domes that makes it look like the marble was crumpled, like paper, and spread again; it's really fragile and delicate looking. And many of the rooms were open air (which would be a pain with the bugs, but I suppose there were drapes and stuff). It would have been spectacular with all the furniture in it. I suppose I just like the way it was put together, with all the platforms and open courtyards and little passageways. And all the windows with the carved gratings, with every surface worked into geometric designs.
There were also fountains. I want to find out how they worked, with no electric pumps.
So apparently Shah Jahan went crazy after his wife died and he built the Taj Mahal for her; his window looks out across the river, facing it. Later on he was overthrown and imprisoned in a tower of the palace, which also had a view of the Taj. When his eyesight failed apparently his son (the one who overthrew him and executed his brother for the throne) installed a lens that let him see the Taj better.
Nuts, right?
Anyway, it was raining like crazy (we already had to wade through the walkway coming in -- when I design my own city I'm going to pay attention to where water would run and make sure these places aren't walkways) and we waded back through the entranceway to the car. (It was muddy water and the deepest part was about ankle deep. So my shoes became little buckets. And even with rain gear we were pretty soaked.) We drive out (we had a driver) heading for town, thinking of getting food. We pass a produce outdoor market.
Animals in the veg. market:
Herd of monkeys stealing/eating produce/fruit
Bajillion dogs
Swine, with bristles, in a herd
Oxen clogging up the road
cows getting fed from the produce stands
cows/horses/donkeys/camels pulling carts
Ridiculous, right? We get a flat, the driver spits his unidentified drug and changes it with us in the car and seemingly without jacking the car up. It starts raining and the road turns into a river (maybe a foot or so deep of sloshing muddy water). There is a pileup, cars going the opposite direction start using our side of the road since the other side is flooded and impassable, it's a mess. It's very surreal, all these cars and bikes sloshing along in this muddy river, leaving a wake, drenched in the rain, which is still coming down. Now I fully understand what rain means out here, when they say "you can't go there, it's RAINING."
We couldn't move very well, so we headed towards the highway. After two hours of crawling along we made it, and after an hour or so we had another flat. Having used the spare, the driver hitchhiked to the nearest tire vendor and back, and again changed the tire with us in the car and seemingly without raising the car. This takes an hour or so. After that, we resume our way.
Our way is pretty unique, I suppose. Our driver drove extraordinarily fast and loud, with much application of the horn. He'd rush at about 60 miles per hour up to a truck, suddenly brake to narrowly avoid colliding with it, and attempt to sidle between the half lane between the truck and the dirt shoulder. After nearly brushing the mirror, he invariably decides to get back behind the truck, stick the front bumper almost under their back metal bar, and start honking until the truck moved into a lane (there were two, but no one pays attention to them), and he passes to resume demon speeds (these roads are paved, but 60ish is a bit excessive where everyone else is going 40 or 50 mph). (We read the speed -- 80 km/hr (~50mph) when we were two feet away from the truck in front of us.) Then it started raining (only one of the windshield wipers worked), and he just kept on going, eyes bloodshot and spitting out mouthfuls of red stuff every once in a while.
In three more hours we stopped at a restaurant, 11 hours after I'd eaten my sandwiches. But most of that time I'd been worrying about dying in a car crash.
Anyway. I'm so glad I'm back.
Animals we passed on the highway:
Camels towing things
Horses towing things
Donkeys towing things
Cows, just chillin'
The sky was overcast, so it wasn't hot. At the Taj Mahal we were greeted with a ginormous swarm of vendors, and acquired a guide with a good accent and large reflective sunglasses. It was impressive and beautiful, although I mentioned that it's cost was really borne by the country and laborers, not the Shah who commissioned it, so it's really less of a temple of love than a huge economic rent. (But really. It's amazing and the design is really impressive. I've never seen anything like it, even in the East. And it's so PRETTY, which was something lacking in my China trips. They were more about sheer age and massiveness. Or else everything was too old and worn to still be pretty).
Mm. Then we went to Agra Fort, which was actually more interesting. It's a giant palace for the Moguls and I didn't realize how complicated the layout was until we got lost; everyone just kept adding to it, sort of on whim (it seems). I love how one king would be like, hm, I want a life-size Parcheesi board where I will use my concubines as pieces, build it. The walls are hollow so they can be filled with water (they're about a foot and a half thick on the outside layer) as heat sinks. What you can do with infinite money!
And of course everything was really, really pretty. We came into the fort where everything is sandstone (Akbar's work), and you wander along all these rooms and passageways and suddenly everything is blinding white marble. There are floral patterns of semi-precious stones inlaid in the marble and the walkways are all built of tessellated shapes. There's also this repeating rhombus pattern on the inside of the domes that makes it look like the marble was crumpled, like paper, and spread again; it's really fragile and delicate looking. And many of the rooms were open air (which would be a pain with the bugs, but I suppose there were drapes and stuff). It would have been spectacular with all the furniture in it. I suppose I just like the way it was put together, with all the platforms and open courtyards and little passageways. And all the windows with the carved gratings, with every surface worked into geometric designs.
There were also fountains. I want to find out how they worked, with no electric pumps.
So apparently Shah Jahan went crazy after his wife died and he built the Taj Mahal for her; his window looks out across the river, facing it. Later on he was overthrown and imprisoned in a tower of the palace, which also had a view of the Taj. When his eyesight failed apparently his son (the one who overthrew him and executed his brother for the throne) installed a lens that let him see the Taj better.
Nuts, right?
Anyway, it was raining like crazy (we already had to wade through the walkway coming in -- when I design my own city I'm going to pay attention to where water would run and make sure these places aren't walkways) and we waded back through the entranceway to the car. (It was muddy water and the deepest part was about ankle deep. So my shoes became little buckets. And even with rain gear we were pretty soaked.) We drive out (we had a driver) heading for town, thinking of getting food. We pass a produce outdoor market.
Animals in the veg. market:
Herd of monkeys stealing/eating produce/fruit
Bajillion dogs
Swine, with bristles, in a herd
Oxen clogging up the road
cows getting fed from the produce stands
cows/horses/donkeys/camels pulling carts
Ridiculous, right? We get a flat, the driver spits his unidentified drug and changes it with us in the car and seemingly without jacking the car up. It starts raining and the road turns into a river (maybe a foot or so deep of sloshing muddy water). There is a pileup, cars going the opposite direction start using our side of the road since the other side is flooded and impassable, it's a mess. It's very surreal, all these cars and bikes sloshing along in this muddy river, leaving a wake, drenched in the rain, which is still coming down. Now I fully understand what rain means out here, when they say "you can't go there, it's RAINING."
We couldn't move very well, so we headed towards the highway. After two hours of crawling along we made it, and after an hour or so we had another flat. Having used the spare, the driver hitchhiked to the nearest tire vendor and back, and again changed the tire with us in the car and seemingly without raising the car. This takes an hour or so. After that, we resume our way.
Our way is pretty unique, I suppose. Our driver drove extraordinarily fast and loud, with much application of the horn. He'd rush at about 60 miles per hour up to a truck, suddenly brake to narrowly avoid colliding with it, and attempt to sidle between the half lane between the truck and the dirt shoulder. After nearly brushing the mirror, he invariably decides to get back behind the truck, stick the front bumper almost under their back metal bar, and start honking until the truck moved into a lane (there were two, but no one pays attention to them), and he passes to resume demon speeds (these roads are paved, but 60ish is a bit excessive where everyone else is going 40 or 50 mph). (We read the speed -- 80 km/hr (~50mph) when we were two feet away from the truck in front of us.) Then it started raining (only one of the windshield wipers worked), and he just kept on going, eyes bloodshot and spitting out mouthfuls of red stuff every once in a while.
In three more hours we stopped at a restaurant, 11 hours after I'd eaten my sandwiches. But most of that time I'd been worrying about dying in a car crash.
Anyway. I'm so glad I'm back.