Agra – 9th to 11th March

Once again this entry comes to you directly from the Indian railway network. The chai (tea) man is doing his long run up and down the train and the seat next to me is empty – happy days. I did have a panic when I saw all of the train carriages had their windows open in the 31° heat, but fortunately the final few carriages where my seat indeed did have AC as advertised. The £2.50 upgrade from General to AC Chair Class (CC) is simply a must (albeit that is double the price). It’s telling that despite the relatively inexpensive upgrade (to aircon and a reserved seat) the train has 10 carriages of General and only 3 AC carriages (2 CC and one third class sleeper car).

Observations aside, my tale in Agra also starts on the inbound train. Agra is the third and final point on the (previously mentioned) golden triangle route. While it has a fort, named you guessed it Agra Fort, its principal attraction is the Taj Mahal. My train was on the Thursday and I took the time to plan the specifics of my visit to the Taj. Having my next train booked for Saturday daytime I had a whole day set aside for the Taj. Anyway, long story short, the Taj is shut on Fridays 🤣. But actually this didn’t prove to be a problem as: a) your ticket only gives you entrance for 3hrs so a full day isn’t possible, and being one of the most visited attractions in India it gets incredibly busy so dawn is the best time to arrive. My Friday freed up and the Taj was pencilled in for Saturday morning. 

Once at my hostel and after check-in I headed to one of the several rooftops and was greeted by an outstanding and unobstructed view of the Taj Mahal. The sort of view you expect in a 5 star hotel, not an £8 a night hostel. The cherry on top was the free tea on offer! So that evening of course I had a beer with a couple of Germans watching the sunset across the Taj (they may have been Dutch actually, not quite sure, but lovely people either way). As usual for India the sunsets are a deep orange, which while beautiful are a result of the air pollution…

My now free Saturday became a lovely chill day for a bit of admin, a lovely walk, and some painting while soaking in the view. Agra was a town where the online recommendations and in person reviews had slated the place, however I quite enjoyed it. The hassling from tuktuk drivers, travel agents and currency converters were perhaps more intense given the touristy nature of the city, but all in all not a bad place to stop for a day or two. I did some final pre-Taj prep that evening and headed for a very early night.

The big day came, and against all of the odds I managed the 05:20 wake up to arrive in the queue for the Taj by 05:45 with maybe 50 people in front of us filling the series of short barriers. What did suck for them was the various queues moved at different paces, so we just flew through the line moving quickly and we were in way ahead of a lot of the very early birds (proving the second mouse does get the cheese). For the first 30 minutes or hour the tranquillity was golden, and a prime opportunity for snappy snaps.

The whole Taj site was beautiful. The Taj itself stands on a raised platform bordering the river at one end of the large, completely symmetrical, walled garden complex. The walled gardens are then split into quadrants by waterways and bordered by disciplined wooded areas. The main octangal structure and its four external towers are constructed completely of marble and change colour throughout the day; golden in the morning, white in the day, and blue at night. Besides the Taj sits its twin mosques maintaining the symmetry.

The story behind the Taj Mahal dates back to the 1600’s. The building was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahān as a mausoleum for his wife who died in childbirth (to their 14th child). Her name was Mumtaz Mahal – I’ll leave you to piece that one together. Eventually the Emperor was buried beside his wife in the crypt beneath the monument – after being overthrown and imprisoned by his son. The emperor had intended for a second complex across the river for his burial (made out of black marble instead) but that was also stopped by his son.

When the Emperor set out to construct the Taj Mahal he wanted to create the most beautiful building ever, and to be fair to the bloke, he did well. Allegedly it is distinguished as the finest example of Mughal architecture. Behind the beauty lies a number of optical illusions and clever tricks (as well as stunnign architeture). For example the inscriptions decorating the building grow in font to account for the text at the top being further away. The four towers surrounding the mausoleum are ever so slightly leaned away from the centre, so that in the event of an earthquake or similar event they would fall without damaging the main structure. The minor-pillars are decorated with linked downward arrow shapes, which give the appearance that the pillars are eight pointed stars however up close you can see their flat octogons. All of this meant the construction employed 20,000 workers over 22 years with an estimated equivalent cost of $1bn (the substantive construction didn’t take that long but the decoration took years extra).

Finally the main chamber within the Taj stands two cenotaphs behind a very ornate filigree marble screen, which is then decorated with a beautiful floral pattern. But in a very classy move, which Emily wouldn’t understand, the centres of the flowers are actually semi-precious and precious stones. The inner chamber also echos so that a single flute note will reverbate five times audably (although the guides resorted to hoots of a sort). 

That’s it for Agra, next stop Udaipur.