It was a five hour drive from Jaipur to Agra. There wasn’t much to do except take naps, talk about Indian culture and places we still want to go to, and oh yeah, take more pictures of what we see on the road. Like a race between this camel and the motorcycle…
or this temple..
and maybe wait for these goats to cross the highway.
Our entry into Agra began with a very quick stop to Fatehpur Sikri. It could have been the heat, or the fact that we were hungry, or maybe the fact that we had to remove our shoes to get in (we’ve been told these could get stolen), but we decided not to go inside.
After a quick lunch at the hotel, we went to the Agra Fort. It’s this massive complex that used to be the center of government in the old days.
As with most of the places in India we’ve seen so far, there’s a lot of beautiful things to see and stories to hear. Inside the fort, we weren’t disappointed.
There were beautiful handmade paintings on the pillars. Our guide said the ink used for these were made from crushed minerals. Like red is for ruby, yellow is for gold, green is for emerald…well you get the drift. So can you imagine how very careful the artists had to be when they were making these. There were actually real precious stones that were stuck on these wall sculptures. And again, the engravings were handmade on the marble. I wonder if the people who made this were punished when they made a mistake while carving..
The night before, while reviewing our photos, the three of us noticed that we hardly had shots of ourselves. I guess there were too many things we wanted to remember that we’d almost forgotten we should include ourselves at some shots. So at this point, some “people pictures” had to be taken…
It’s a funny thing…we’d only started out to take pictures of the three of us. Pretty soon, there were people approaching us, asking to have their pictures taken with us. Rhoda insisted that i should put some eyeliner on and wear a bindee, so I’d look more like a local. I was hoping that doing so would help us to not be approached by locals hawking overpriced souvenirs. That doesn’t really work when you’re riding a van with a huge “tourist” sign on the windshield, and you’re toting around a huge camera bag.
As for me, having my picture taken with students on a field trip (and their principal, I might add), was quite an experience..
After the ten minute photo session, the principal approached us to present his business card and insisted that we email him the pictures as soon as we get back home.
Taking pictures of myself and my friends, got to be too tiring. There were more things in this wonderful fort that we had to take. The Agra Fort, after all, served as the prison of Shah Jahan, the lovestruck builder of the Taj Mahal. In the late years of the Shah, his son declared him mentally unfit to rule the kingdom, and confined him inside the fort.
Of course, he had to have quarters fit for a king. So he had a view of the monument he built for his wife, everyday for the rest of his life. With a view of the breathtaking Taj
That was our first glimpse of the Taj. the next day, we went there. But we had to contain our excitement, we needed to rest and chill out for the night. For now, here’s a little bit more of the fort.
Remember the saris we’d bought from Jaipur? They will be put to use the next day…
This is a series of posts about my India adventure. Here are the rest:
