You’ll probably recognize both the people and the building behind them

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.

The Taj Mahal in early morning light and fog

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.

The view a little later in the morning as some of the fog had burned off

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.

The interior of the Hall of Private Audiences is dominated by this carved stone central column, built all of a single piece, connecting to narrow bridges. Atop the plinth, Akbar the Great is said to have debated scholars and ministers who stood at the ends of the bridges.

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.

Mark at Fatehpur Sikri

Tombs in Jama Masjid, the mosque next to the ancient city

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.

I loved this view of the intricate carving that’s just all over these ruins

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.

More pictures of us at the Taj

This is a side building near the Taj Mahal, thought to have been built mostly just to balance the very similar building, a mosque, built on the other side of the Taj Mahal

Me, with the mosque in the background

The entrance to the Jama Masjid, the mosque associated with Fatehpur Sikri, was an impressive climb up steep stairs

So steep, in fact, that goats were more common than people

Here I am, inside a doorway in the mosque complex

Mark loved this sign at the Agra Fort. They didn’t seem to be doing a lot of business.

Meanwhile the streets of Agra were bustling, dirty, lively, congested … almost impossible to describe

Oddly, we saw a few goats like this wearing sweaters. Or pajamas. Or something.

I saved the best for last. On our first afternoon in Agra we walked on an almost desolate road that ran alongside the Taj Mahal. This guy was meditating in front of the tree.

Mark at the entrance to Humayun’s Tomb

After 18 years we’re back in India. Mark & I – along with Mark’s dad – were in India back in 1999. I had been invited to participate in a Ford Foundation conference in Goa so we decided to make a vacation out of it, working our way down the southwestern coast. Simply put, we loved India. The intensity, the flavors, the utter uniqueness of everything enchanted us. To be clear, India is not an easy place to travel; the poverty and crowds and touts and, well, everything. But for us at least, enchanting.

So we finally made it back, with our first stop in New Delhi. And to be honest I’m not quite sure what to make of it. While neighboring Delhi is an ancient city – it has been occupied continuously since the sixth century BC – New Delhi was built by the British in the 20th century as a symbol of their imperial aspirations and inaugurated as the capital of India in 1931. And so while Delhi – or Old Delhi, as it is sometimes referred to – is an almost unimaginable warren of tiny streets clogged with every form of life you can imagine, New Delhi is all wide thoroughfares and open spaces.

One of Delhi’s crazy intense streets with Jama Masjid — the Friday Mosque — looming

That doesn’t mean, however, that New Delhi is somehow calm. Though we were staying in New Delhi, much of what we wanted to see was in Old Delhi. On our first morning we headed out to walk into the old town. Now, walking is apparently not something one does in New Delhi, at least by choice. But we find it the best way to get a real feel for a place and figure out how it all fits together. And first impressions were that this is one intense city; just the traffic and the horns and every tuktuk driver you see stopping to ask if we want a ride. After all, no one would walk just because they want to.

An odd aspect of our walk was that not too long after we set out we noticed a lot of armed guards along the side of the road. Then one of them motioned that we had to get off the sidewalk. Strange, but there was a parallel side street so we started walking down that. Then another armed guard started signaling to us that we had to get off that, too. He motioned us onto a small cross street that led to a police station, which seemed weird. There were a couple other people there, though, and one of them explained. The Prime Minister was coming by, you see. And for whatever reason pedestrians are not allowed on the street when he passes by. (It’s not just us; auto traffic, too, is stopped.) The problem, our new friend explained, is that sometimes they think he’s coming but then he gets delayed, and then you just have to sit and wait … and wait … and wait. In this case the motorcade raced by just a few minutes after we were stopped, so we were soon back on our way.

Our goal that morning was Delhi’s Red Fort, for 200 years the residence of the Mughal emperors who ruled northern India and today a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This was a case where for us the journey really was the experience. First along the wide but congested boulevards of New Delhi and then through the narrow and equally congested winding streets of Old Delhi our walk took some three hours; by the time we got to the Fort we were too tired and hungry to take it on. Instead it was off to lunch and then back to the hotel. We did eventually make it back to the Red Fort, though, and it was worth knocking around in for a while.

Some shots from inside the Red Fort suggest the wealth and power of the old Mughal Empire

Another highlight was Humayun’s Tomb, built for one of the Mughal emperors in the mid-16th century and another World Heritage Site. At the time it was a major shift in Mughal architecture and ultimately was a model for the Taj Mahal, built by Humayun’s great-grandson Shah Jahan. As you tour both the Tomb and the Red Fort the remains today are stunning; you get a real sense of the incredible power and wealth of the empire some five hundred years ago.

For all the interest in that Mughal history, though, the real highlight of Delhi is just the city itself and the chaos and bustle in it. And I don’t say that all in a good way; I’m not sure I’m going to like India as much this time as I did 18 years ago when every step you take is accompanied by someone in your ear trying to get you to go over here or buy this or ride in that tuktuk or … something. And when every breath you take in is more polluted than anything you’ve ever experienced. I just keep coming back to the word “intense.” Even the food isn’t as good as we’d hoped or expected. It’s as though there are only two types of restaurants: crazy expensive international hotel type and scary local type.

Our long walk from New Delhi into the old city passed by this open area that somehow has become a big clothes-drying area. We passed by here a couple times and it always looked like this.

All of which is to say maybe I’ve gotten too old and fancy to enjoy India as much as I did when I was in my mid-forties. We have another six weeks in India, most of it in the state of Rajasthan, so we’ll have time to figure that out. Next stop, though, is Agra and the Taj Mahal.

Kids loved seeing us and waving to us, including this busload we encountered near the India Gate, a monument to the fallen heroes from World War I

And then there were these cute guys who wanted a picture with me

Another street seen from Old Delhi. Did I mention how intense this city is?

Our walk to the Red Fort went through a crazy busy street market where pretty much everything was for sale. Mark particularly wanted that Happy Hanukkah sweater but I talked him out of buying it.

We also went to Raj Ghat, a big park that marked the spot where Mohandas Gandhi was cremated after his assassination by a Hindu nationalist who thought Gandhi was too accepting of India’s Moslem minority. Just a reminder that anti-Moslem bigotry has a long history with sometimes unimaginable consequences.

The Gandhi logo – simple, elegant, and instantly recognizable – is common around Delhi

And finally one last picture of us outside the Red Fort