Round the World 2015: Agra -Taj Mahal

We left Delhi for Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Traffic, noise, and the crush of humanity improves immensely just by leaving Old Delhi (the old formerly walled city) for New Delhi. We are told most taxi drivers refuse to take fares in Old Delhi. Depending on who you talk to/check with there are between 16 and 20 million people in metropolitan Delhi. Most of whom display true compassion and great patience. I'm not sure you would last long here otherwise.

We travelled by taxi approximately 230 kilometers south to Agra via a new (3 yo) private expressway. We passed through the new suburb of Noida where a vast planned community is being scratched out of the earth. There are hundreds of high-rise, multi-family structures under construction, many of them with several thousand housing units each. India's urban areas keep growing.

We got a taxi and guide for 2 days in Delhi, a taxi to Agra, a day with a taxi and guide in Agra, a taxi from Agra to Jaipur (230 km), a day with a taxi and guide in Jaipur, and a taxi to the airport in Jaipur all for less than the price of first class AC train tickets for the four of us.

The smog improved as we left Delhi, but two sources of air pollution became apparent, the wheat harvest and brick ovens. Wheat was being cut by hand, sheaved and stacked. Threshers pulled by tractors are moving field to field separating the grain from the chaff and kicking up great clouds of dust. The wheat is shoveled up and placed in sacks. The chaff is either placed in thatch huts for storage as fodder or moved on the roadways for centralized storage.

There were also hundreds of brick ovens along the way, many spewing black coal smoke. Vast areas have had 10 to 12 feet of clay removed and turned into bricks. The clay is formed into bricks and placed to dry in the same place it is cut from the earth. After what must be a few days, the bricks are stacked loosely in piles for further drying before transport to the brick ovens to be fired. In many places, there are acres of formed and fired bricks. Wheat is planted on what soil is left. Bricks are used everywhere, even for walls in 20+-story high rises.

Agra is a city of 1.7 million on the southern banks of the Yamuna River. It is known for its leather goods, mostly shoes. We saw many rickshaws piles with impossible (I'd estimate 500+) loads of shoe boxes.

In Agra, we visited the Taj Mahal! Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal between 1629 and 1651 in loving memory of his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal (he had 3 wives). It is a beautiful structure constructed of white marble inlaid with onyx, malachite, jasper and coral. Over 20,000 Persian stone artisans worked at any given time on its construction. In the right light the whole thing seems almost luminescent. The outer pillars are not vertical, but actually all point slightly away from the main structure in anticipation that they may settle inward in an earthquake. What a coincidence! An hour after we left, the large earthquake in Nepal shook the region and guests were asked to leave the Taj Mahal. We only felt the aftershock. No earthquake damage to the Taj but several buildings in Agra received damage.

Shah Jahan is the same fellow that built Old Delhi and moved the capital there from Agra. Unfortunate for Shah Jahan, his son Aurangzeb, deposed him and placed him in house arrest after killing all of his other sons.

We also visited the Agra Fort and at sunset, viewed the Taj Mahal from the opposite side of the river at the Black Taj (never completed).

We have nearly recovered from our bouts with Delhi belly. I don't recall being that sick in the past 20 years.