Agra

Our driver picked us up from our hotel in Delhi. I think in some ways hiring a driver saves a lot of hassles in India but it still isn’t totally stress free. We found our driver through friends from my work who were going to India the same time as us. For the most part our driver is a nice guy and does his best but it is a poor country and at times, whether his work requires it or he picks it, he stops at places where he’ll get a kickback. Some of them are ok and some aren’t great. I’m still not totally sure how it works but usually the restaurants where we stopped for lunch gave him free meals if he brought us in. Some of them had decent food and some have been fairly bad. Usually the bathrooms are relatively clean though. One day we said we wanted to go to McDonalds instead and he seemed pretty bummed but we bought him lunch there and then he seemed fine with it. He also took us to two shops that were clearly tourist traps but they weren’t too high pressure and it only took us twenty minutes out of our day.  We ended up buying some textiles at one even though I’m sure they were way overpriced, even after we bargained them down. We are still terrible bargainers. The store was a lot cleaner than regular shops on the street at least and it still wasn’t that much money to us. The car and driver also included tour guides which we never requested and didn’t really want. It isn’t expensive but you have to tip them (about $4 per day in tips is average, we spent more on audio guides at each location) and for us we prefer to walk around on our own at our own pace. I like to sometimes stop for a while at pretty spots and do some sketches which Danny doesn’t mind, but it is awkward if a guide is also waiting. We asked our driver to cancel the rest of the local guides after Agra.

In Agra the main attraction is the Taj Mahal. We asked the driver and and local guide what there was to do at night there and they both look confused and thought really hard before suggesting a movie. We ended up having dinner at the hotel and calling it an early night. I planned that part of the trip poorly, we booked two nights in a hotel in Agra – Thursday and Friday – with the plan to arrive Thursday afternoon, rest a bit, and see the Taj Friday.  It turned out the Taj was closed once a week on Fridays so we made sure to leave early enough to see it Thursday afternoon.

On the way to Agra, we stopped in Mathura. Mathura is the birthplace of Lord Krishna. Krishna is a Hindi deity we didn’t know much about. We had a guide there show us the site of his birth and tell us a story about some relative of his who tried to kill him as a baby to limit his chances of having any rivals for power later. There were some paintings of Krishna as a baby in the temple that reminded me of the story of Moses. Behind the Hindu temple there was a giant Mosque. It seems to be a theme here that next to most Hindu temples we found the Muslims built a larger, more impressive mosque. Come to think of it the same is true at the wall in Jerusalem. We weren't allowed to take any pictures there.

After Mathura we drove to our hotel in Agra. It was similar quality to the one in Delhi but it had a great view of Taj Mahal, when it wasn’t too dusty to see it.  The power went out at the hotel for a few minutes both nights we were there and hot water was only available in the mornings. 

We got to the Taj Mahal around 4 and had a tour from the local guide. He was a nice guy who was working to become a teacher. The Taj was beautiful and better maintained than most sights we saw. It was a bit crowded but not terrible since we went close to closing time. Agra is famous for its marble and the Taj has some beautiful inlaid designs with precious stones. 

Since it was built by Muslims and they don’t like to have likenesses of living things they are mostly geometric patterns.  I noticed I kept seeing a symbol that looked like a Jewish star at all different sights. I asked our guide about it and he said it was a tantric symbol.  I googled it later and found out it is a symbol called Sri Yantra. It is actually a slightly more complex geometric symbol than the Jewish star but at its center are two interconnected triangles which we found all over  India. Danny said it was just a shape and not necessarily a Jewish star. He then decided to start calling every triangle we found "Danny Triangles." He tried really hard to make it stick.

 

Friday we had a whole day to kill in Agra. First we went to Agra Fort which is the other noteworthy site within the city. It was another pretty Fort complex built by the Moguls. They all started to blur for me around that time. We also went to a more minor site called Itmad-Ud-Dulah’s Tomb – nicknamed Baby Taj. It was built by the grandfather of the Taj Mahal’s builder. It is much smaller but I thought the marble work was even prettier. It was also much less crowded.

Saturday, we stopped  a bit outside the city at another UNESCO site built by the Mughals called Fatehpur Sikri. We didn’t have a guide and it was nice to wander around on our own a bit. It looked pretty similar to other sights we saw and they all really were starting to blur together at that point.