Starting from our stay in Ranthambore we are spending most of our time in India in the state of Rajasthan. Located in the northwestern part of the country, Rajasthan is India’s largest state, accounting for over 10 percent of the landmass. Now that we have those tigers out of the way our first urban stop is the capital Jaipur and, with a little over three million people, the state’s largest city. Supposedly a major tourist destination (though we didn’t see a lot of western tourists), it is the home of two UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The city dates from 1727 when Jai Singh II, after whom the city is named, moved his capital here from nearby Amber. For our admittedly limited purposes here the next important thing that happened in Jaipur was in 1876 when, in anticipation of a visit from the Prince of Wales – later Edward VII – Sawai Ram Singh I ordered the city’s buildings painted pink. The order remains in effect in the old city, thus explaining why Jaipur is sometimes known as the Pink City.

I like pink so my hopes were high. Only to be crushed. By my standards “pink” would be an overstatement. More kind of a faded, dirty, peeling, crusty salmon maybe, with lots of brown smudges. After I got over my disappointment I could find a certain attractiveness to the city, but I would definitely not call it pink.

I have to admit that I’m surprised at just how dirty, squalid even, we are finding these Indian cities. I mean, we’ve been to India before and we know it’s poor. I’ve read Katherine Boo’s stunning Behind the Beautiful Forevers, her National Book Award-winning masterpiece on poverty in Mumbai. But somehow it seems as though I’ve read a lot over the last few years about how India is finally booming. And after the time we’ve spent in China, where huge cities have sparkling parks and beautiful transit systems, I was expecting a little less of, well, the filth and a little more sparkle. There’s not a lot of sparkle to be found. Stories of a resurgent India are likely true, but from such a low base. In fact, according to the World Bank India’s per capita income is just $6,490 compared to China’s $15,500. Thus the squalor we find here versus the clean parks in China.

Once you start to accept Jaipur on its own terms though – no pink, no sparkle – you can start to appreciate its own beauty interesting qualities. The first big site to visit is the Amer Fort, about seven miles outside of Jaipur and the region’s original capital. One of Jaipur’s two UNESCO sites, the “fort” – it’s really a palace – is laid out in four sectors, each with its own courtyard. As we experienced in both Delhi and Agra, the palace here again reminds you that there was once a lot of wealth and power in these places. Beautiful carved sandstone, marble, lattice-work windows (so the women could see out but others couldn’t see in…), mirrored walls and ceilings – this place has it all.

The next big site was the City Palace, the home of Jaipur’s Maharajas from the 18th century on. Interestingly, and unlike most historic royal palaces we see, this one is still occupied, and still occupied by the royal family. Even though there isn’t a royal family. Royals were eliminated in India in 1947 when the country gained independence, though royal titles were retained until constitutional changes were imposed in 1970. The Maharaja of Jaipur kept his home, though, kept living here, and people kept calling him the Maharaja or King. When he died in 2011 his adopted son – his grandson in truth – ascended to the no-longer throne and is now called the King, even though he has no formal role.

Oh, and there is a bit of scandal here. The current king, Padmanabh Singh, is the son of the old king’s daughter, his only child. Expected to marry into royalty of some sort, though, she married a commoner and, worse yet, the son of one of the king’s staff people. Imagine the horror; apparently people really were aghast. Not to worry, though; the marriage didn’t do so well and once the commoner was out of the picture the king formally adopted his grandson so he could ascend to the pretend throne.

At any rate, we shelled out big bucks – something like $30 each – for a tour of the palace. That’s really quite unlike us, as we usually don’t like tours. In this case it was the only way to see the inside of the palace – the part that’s not currently lived in, at least – and it was worth it. Nothing earth shattering or anything, but lots of pretty stuff and a better understanding of how all that royal stuff works around here.

There was one last site to visit, right near the City Palace, called the Jantar Mantar. It’s a collection of 19 architectural astronomical instruments built by Jaipur’s founder Jai Singh II and is Jaipur’s other UNESCO site. The various instruments include the world’s largest sundial, a device so accurate that it supposedly indicates the time to within two seconds. Of course, as Mark points out, our AppleWatches are exactly correct, so what’s the big deal? To be honest, I just don’t have much of a scientific bent about me so I really didn’t get much sense of what it was all about. To a junior astronomer, though, it must be a pretty interesting place.

So that was Jaipur. Not as pink as I’d hoped but a tasty treat once you get over the dirt and honking and all that. And surprisingly picturesque, we discovered, as we went through all the photos we’d taken.

It was almost embarrassing; I’ve traveled the world, been to India twice, but never been to the Taj Mahal. We had to correct that. And here’s a warning: it is every bit as beautiful as I’d heard. You’re going to see a lot of pictures here.

Beyond seeing the Taj Mahal I had a hope coming here. Compared to Delhi, I figured, with its teeming millions of people, Agra and its mere 1.6 million people I thought might be a little easier. Wrong! The streets are crazy crowded and busy; you can’t figure out if it’s more important to keep your eyes up on the traffic or down to avoid the cow, dog, and sheep shit. The constant harassment asking if you want a ride or to shop or whatever just grates on your nerves. And the air seemed at least as bad as in Delhi, to me at least. In other words no let up on the chaos and intensity.

Once you get past all that, though, the Taj Mahal is seriously beautiful. After taking the train down from Delhi – surprisingly comfortable and almost shockingly on time – we decided to hit the site first thing in the morning. As in getting there before sunrise. It meant an early alarm and a cold tuktuk ride in the dark. Then confusion as to just where we were supposed to get tickets and queue up and all that. A frustrating lack of accessible information. And then when going through security they confiscated my little flashlight, saying it was against the rules because someone flash light on the building. We get here in the dark but I can’t take a flashlight? And you’re afraid of this little three-inch flashlight? Have you noticed that cell phones pretty much all have flashlights these days too? They weren’t really into discussing the fine points of their policy so I lost a cool flashlight given to me by Mark’s brother in Bali. Sad.

This was all starting off on the wrong foot. I was perhaps more than a little crabby at that point. (And heading out before breakfast is never a good strategy for me….) But wow, once you see the Taj Mahal in that early morning light, you get over those annoyances really quickly. The main building was built between 1632 and 1643, commissioned by Shah Jahan – ruler of the Mughal Empire from 1628 to 1658, when he was overthrown by his son (kids these days!) – as a mausoleum for his favorite wife who died in childbirth. She survived the first 13 babies but that 14th did her in.

The building is constructed of white marble from Rajasthan (the neighboring Indian state where we’ll be spending most of our time in country) along with 28 types of precious and semi-precious stones from all across Asia. It is believed that some 20 thousand artisans worked on the project which, in today’s currency, cost something like $800 million or more. Alas, however, contrary to myths I’ve heard many times, there appears to be no truth to the rumors of the death or dismemberment of the thousands of people who worked on the monument. Just stories made up to make it seem a little more romantic, I guess.

There’s not much to add about our time there except that it was every bit as beautiful as I could have hoped. And seeing it near sunrise was ideal; the lighting and relative lack of crowds made it perfect. Our timing was fortunate, too; the next morning was much foggier and we likely wouldn’t have had an experience anything like we did. Late the next day, though, we went to the Agra Fort, from which there is a fabulous view of the Taj, and where Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his son for the last eight years of his life. Jahan had a perfect few of the Taj Mahal and one can just imagine his son saying “There – look at how you wasted my inheritance!” At any rate, Mark remembered the incredible view from the Agra Fort from his visit here in 1993 and couldn’t wait to see it again. He’ll have to keep waiting, though – the fog/smog was so intense you could only see the very faintest of outlines of the building. So not everything worked perfectly for us.

If you have the time – and we have lots of time – there’s more to see in Agra than just the Taj Mahal. As noted above, we spent one afternoon at the Agra Fort, home of the Mughal emperors from 1556 to 1658 when they shifted the capital to Delhi. While it’s called a fort it is really a walled city with palaces and mosques and towers and gardens and all that kind of stuff. Definitely worth a stop, particularly – I can only presume – if the air is clear enough to see across to the Taj Mahal. Even without that it is interesting, as we saw in the Red Fort in Delhi, the wealth and power of the Mughal dynasty.

And we made a day trip out of Agra as well, some 25 miles southwest to Fatehpur Sikri, capital of the Mughal Empire from 1571 to 1585. Built by Akbar the Great, son of the Humayun whose tomb we saw in Delhi (and grandfather to Shah Jahan who built the Taj Mahal), who ruled the empire from 1556 to 1605, it was abandoned soon after it was finished due to exhaustion of the water supply. One might expect he’d have thought of that earlier.

At any rate, the ruins are impressive. There’s a great and massive mosque complex and then the remains of the imperial city, all of which are fun to poke around in. After, of course, you work your way past the constant barrage of locals telling you to go here, to come with them, to look at their shop or goods, to buy stuff. After you’re done with that, though – and when you think you’re done, you’re not; there are more – it is all just more evidence that this empire about which I knew little (and still know little) was a big deal.

Thus we made good use of our three-night stop in Agra. I can finally check off that big item on my to-do list (really only the Pyramids are left) and we can move on to Rajasthan.