A few things seen on the drive to and from Agra:
Giant Shiva or Vishnu statues...I can't remember which now but they are massive and awesome and just hanging out in the middle of a field. Crazy.
Fairly decent sized group of nude men walking down the road. On the way there AND back. And by nude I mean NUDE. Carrying sticks.
A goat wearing a sweatshirt.
A peacock crossing the road.
Puppies brawling on the side of the road.
Giant musclemen posters and billboards. Never have I seen an Indian that looks like that, nor do I know anybody that wants to look like that, so I'm slightly confused by the whole thing. Who are they advertising at?
But anyway, on with the trip recap.
The trip to Agra started out early and shakey. Ratish was sick and I wasn't feeling so hot myself.
The stop and go traffic doesn't help these kinds of things. I was involved in my first Indian fender-bender and am surprised it took as long as it did. Our driver, Salim, was amazing other than this little mishap, which was just inevitable. You'd think it would happen every 40 seconds. I've seen more accidents in the last couple days than the whole time I've been here though.
The procedure for this accident was different than it would have been at home. The men get out and have a few slightly annoyed words, then start kicking and pushing the car bits back in to place. Then we get in the car and go. That was about it.
I don't know if I could have counted the number of things we nearly ran over, even if I wanted to.
We made a pitstop at the Maharaja Motel for some chai, and browsing of the many knick-knacks they have there, all of which I want.
When we came in I saw a monkey at the front entrance, and when we were leaving she was standing up, in her wee little dress doing something cute. Ratish asks if I want to stop for a picture....
Do I want to stop for a picture of a little dancing, dress wearing monkey...?
Um, YES.
So we stopped, I got to hold the "wife" monkey with makeup on her little face, who also sat on my shoulder and snuggled me. The "husband" monkey had a mustache and sat on his little stick in the picture.
When I got up to leave the guy asked if I wanted to hold the cobra. Automatic reaction to that question is NO, I do not want to hold the snake. But he told me it wouldn't bite, and I believed him, so I held it in it's little basket. Ratish was very reluctant to come near me but we got him in the picture.
I'm not sure how they train them to do the things they do and I'm sure I don't want to know but I got to hug a tiny monkey so I can cross something off my lifetime goals list now.
The monkey high stayed with me the rest of the day.
We made the rest of the seemingly never-ending journey in to Agra and visited Akbar's Tomb first. It's not as busy and fancy as the Taj but it's still very cool. All tombs are pretty cool really... Also literally; it was nice to venture down in to the cool marble darkness. There was a whole herd of deer things, chipmunks/squirrels, parrots, white birds, a monkey, and a nice breeze.
Taj Mahal
In the midst of a teensy weensy, super packed street you can simply look across the half dried up river to see the Taj Mahal, and on the other side is the Agra Red Fort. It's always a little strange seeing something so epic from your little dirty street where everyday life passes by like nothing is there. People long to see the Taj, many people never get to, and yet to local people it's just that white building over there. I think it must be sort of similar to how I feel about the Rocky Mountains. I know they are there and pretty but I don't give them much thought for the most part. But there has to be days at sunrise or sunset where a lone goat-herder looks up and thinks, hey that's neat.
When we arrived I felt like I had my own posse. There was a herd of young men waiting outside my car door, when I got out they said hello and asked where I was from; if they wanted anything else I haven't any idea what it was. But they were there the next day as well. We got ourselves a mostly Hindi-speaking tour guide and Ratish filled me in on the details. I don't know how much he charged but he seemed pretty worth it. There was at least a couple hundred people in line when we got there. They have seperate lines for men and for women. They give you a little frisk when you get there and it seems to be inappropriate for men to see women get patted down. There's usually two lines anywhere that this happens.
We, however, got to skip the line (not the pat down) and made our way through the main gate in just a minute or two. Then there was a courtyard with another red gate, which leads to the Taj.
When you walk through there it's slightly surreal. It's something I've seen a million times, but never in person. It looks exactly the same and completely different at the same time. Somehow. The shape is the same, I know what the ponds/fountains look like, I know where the trees are but of course in pictures you can't get the sense of how bright and perfect it is.
Once you start looking at details and it occurs to you how long ago it was built and how much technology they didn't have, then it kinda blows your mind.
I read in one of my books that the two mosques on either side of the Taj were build there because the foundation is "floating" marble. It's not actually floating is in on the water but it's somehow not as solid as it could be and the weight evens things out. We also learned from the guide that the 4 pillars on each corner were built to lean slightly away from the main structure; in the event of a large earthquake the pillars will fall away from the Taj and not in to the tomb itself. Clever!
There are 22 steps down to the the main chamber thing, because it took 22 years to make. There's all kinds of number significance in these places but I don't remember the others.
Of course all the marble carving was done by hand back in those days and I can't even begin to imagine how on earth they did that. There is teeeeny tiny stonework in the marble that looks like it was done yesterday. It really makes me wish I could have seen it in it's glory days with fountains going and flowers and brand new marble and clear skies. It must have been able to shine for miles. It's just crazy to look at the work and imagine how long it took to make even a square foot of this building, let alone the entire thing. And he had intended to make a black replica as well! It would have been really amazing if he got to finish but his family put a stop to all his spending of their inheritance.
The grounds of the Taj are lovely as well; it's nice to get away from the messyness of the rest of India for a little bit. There has been a lot of effort to move industrial things away from Agra to help protect the Taj so the air quality out there is slightly better than Delhi.
The little road leading away from the Taj out to the main road was filled with people, monkeys, birds, camels, and puppies. Not to mention kids trying to peddle their Taj snowglobe keychains and whatnot. I read in my India book that some believe replicas of the Taj Mahal are bad luck, so I did not buy one of those. They are very pretty though.
After leaving the Taj we stopped by some marble makers home/showroom/I don't know what, chatted and had chai, checked out his awesome tabletops and whatnot, and then we left. No idea how we knew this person but he seemed like a lovely guy. We got slightly lost, and then when we finally found the hotel I made a mess of things by not bringing my passport with me. I have a copy of it, and I also have a scan in my email but they needed to see the Visa part. Jaggi TOLD us to take our passports with us if we went to a hotel but I spaced it. Maybe I was gazing at his eye lashes instead of listening to him...who knows.
I had to call one of my flatmates to find my passport and get out my computer and take a picture of my Visa and send it to me. Such an ordeal. But I finally got it and all was well, I was just beyond exhausted by then so we had McDonald's again and then relaxed. The ice cream cone was amazing. I had been afraid to eat all day so it was the first meal in several hours. We stayed at the Kant Hotel. They were decent and let me use the internet to try to get my Visa info, but not overly friendly. It's not what I would call "clean" either but it wasn't terribly gross so I dealt with it. In the morning I took a LONG relatively HOT shower and it was the best shower ever. I had toast and an Indian omelette (not what we think of generally, not filled with stuff, just simple) with chai for breakfast. It's becoming my favorite.
Agra Red Fort
From the outside it just looks like a big red fort...thus the name, but inside it's totally amazing. Honestly, just based on the inside it's far more impressive than the Taj. Taj is just a tomb afterall and didn't have to be functional on the inside. This place housed the important people, daughters had their own sections, there were concubines, a market, all marble and stone, there were once diamonds in the ceiling, oil lamps and swings hanging from everywhere, pillars, decorative doors. So awesome. I want to live in it. The courtyards were spotless and green, so refreshing to see. Everything was decorated in some fabulous way. There was a GIANT bathtub thing in the middle of the courtyard that was meant for the prince. It's ridiculous but awesome at the same time.
The fort has two moats, one for water full of alligators/crocodiles/whatever, and another past that in which they kept snakes and lions and other intruder-eating creatures. Also AWESOME. I want a lion moat.
One of the neato things our adorable tiny guide told us was that the fort had double walls; if you hit the wall you can hear that it's hollow. There was a large water tank on the top and during the hot months the water would trickle down between the walls and as the breeze came through it would basically operate as A/C. Also clever!
As you enter the fort there is a steepish incline up to the main grounds; the guide said that when invaders would come up the ramp the soldiers at the top would roll down a huge stone and basically crush them all to death. The history major part of me thinks it's cool that I was walking over a place where someone had been crushed to death who knows how many years before.
Most of the fountains were apparently filled with rose water back in their days. Sadly they no longer function or are too expensive to operate.
As we were finishing up the tour, our guide was showing how if you stand behind a pillar that you can't see any of the others, showing how exact the construction was. I kept noticing a little man kind of scooting around next to me so I kept trying to scoot out of his way thinking he was trying to take a picture of the pillars...but he kept scooting with me. I finally noticed that he was telling his child to come over by me for a picture. I knelt down so the poor 11ish year old boy could come over to me in his little Ganesh shirt and have his picture taken with the white lady. Then dad showed me the picture saying "ok? ok?" It was ok.
Down the walkway a bit an older man gave me crumbs (in exchange for rupees, of course) to feed the chipmunks, who just hopped up in to my hand and were fighting with each other. It was extra cuteness.
**Side note for anyone going to these places...pee before you go. The facilities are not amazing, and you usually have to pay and tip.**
Agra Gate (I think it's called something else but I can't find it.)
Getting here was ultimately confusing and I'm still not entirely sure what the hell happened. I thought we were heading home but then we picked up some guy off the side of the road and he started talking about these ruins around us, so I gathered that this was another sight to be seen. We pull over and get out of the car, get in a rickshaw for about 2 minutes, stop before a gate, walk up a hill for about a minute, the car comes back, people get out, we get in, drive up the rest of the hill for like 40 seconds and then we get out again. I don't know if this was a money saving scheme of some sort but I was very confused. And then I had to climb steep scary steps. With goats.
Anyway...Agra Gate (or whatever it's actually called) is one of the tallest arches in the world or something. And now I can't remember how tall it was either. But you have to climb 50something steps to get to it and it's also 50something high. These people had a thing with the significance of the number of steps.
The inside was similar to the other tombs we'd been to with the exception of the shining bright white mosque inside. The very bizarre thing about this place is that the whole central bit was extremely familiar to me and I can't quite figure out why. I guess I've seen a documentary or something of the sort.
Our guide, who I call Indian Jesus, seemed very in to his showing of stuff. You can tell they do this all day every day because they just speed walk over these graves whereas I'm trying not to step right on top of one and fall over the dead people. If you are able to see my pictures you'll see what I would call marble screens, for lack of a more fitting term. They are like little mosaics but with nothing in between. They are present in many different areas of these forts because, depending on the religious beliefs of their wives and whoever, the women weren't always to be seen. So the women could stay behind these screens because you can see out quite clearly but you can't see in. I think they are very cool. The architecture in this particular place was somewhat unique and cool because it took basic arcitecture from different areas. I can't remember who is who but there's a son, father, and grandfather that built all this stuff and they were all about inter-religious marriages. Too bad we're not as evolved these days.
From what I remember several of them had several wives, and at least one of them had 3- one Hindu, one Muslim, and one Christian. There's one little bit of a rooftop that incorporates symbols from all 3 religions in to one little carved red stone across the roof, basically where our gutter would be. I think the arched part was Muslim design, the symbol in the middle was Hindu, and in between each arch a cross was cut out from the stone. I love mish mashes.
We bought an overpriced but (hopefully) to be donated cloth to take in to the mosque as a sort of offering. They would lay the cloth down on the altar, then you put flowers on top of it, and tie your string to one of the screens. They say that it's a place to make your wishes come true, but like many wishing rules, you're not allowed to tell anybody what your wish is until after it comes true. I had to put an easter basket looking thing on my head to go in but they didn't require me to cover my hair otherwise, which I thought was interesting. There were little men with drums who were either singing or chanting outside the mosque.
There was an elephant tomb behind this fort-esque thing which was the burial place of what's-his-name's favorite elephant. There is a staircase leading down to the tomb which has 7 spirals. Brothers and sisters do not enter this place together because in Hindu tradition 7 trips around the fire means you are married. So this would be not so good.
This place was definitely the worst as far as being harassed by people trying to sell you stuff. I'm fairly certainy that at several points of my visit I could have just reached out to bite someone because they were so close to me. If you have a guide they will shoo them off for you on ocassion but they will also take you to their brother, cousin, something, to show you what was "made in my village" and "special price for you." But this is the way it works. I bought some cool marble stuff from Indian Jesus. Slightly overpriced for India, but not so bad elsewhere I think.
There was a youngish lad who I thought I might have to adopt because he was committed to selling me or Ratish everything he had. He's smart though. When I told him I might come back he said "ma'am, look at my face, ma'am, you remember me." When I came back and didn't want to buy bracelets that I was pretty certain wouldn't fit on my hands he gave his guilt trip. He said, "Oh ma'am, I've been waiting so long for you to come back. This is no good. You are very nice ma'am. You have a nice face." Indian Jesus also said I had a nice face and that his ex-girlfriend was American. I love salesmen. I also had an old man with all of about 3 teeth that told me of his five children that he had to feed and he'd give me the best price. He just kept adding things to the pile of stuff he wanted to sell me. Eventually it was a good deal so I bought some. I think I spent most of my money just at that place. It was quite the experience.
On the way home we stopped for a chai and I saw a bunny begging. It was ridiculously cute. Seriously...he'd get up on his little back legs and stretch his face up there. Oh man. The guy feeding him started giving the bunny more I think because I'd freak out every time and start laughing hysterically.
