After the Taj, our guides dropped us off at the Agra Fort, another UNESCO site. It is the most important fort in India as the country was governed there for hundreds of years. We let one of the locals talk us into hiring him as our tour guide, which was helpful as we wandered around this massive fort with 70-foot walls. It was fun finding monkeys scrambling around.
Seems that most visitors only want to take photos of the Taj from the front. It was fun going over to the side and having the place to ourselves (it may have only been for one minute, but it was still amazing considering the crowds). Yes, that tiny little person is me.
Silly me, I didn’t realize before our visit that the Taj is actually a mausoleum. Some claim it’s a great love story that the Shah had this built after his wife died. Somehow learning that she was the first of three wives and she died while attempting to deliver his 14th child, takes some of the romance out of it for me.
The first glimpse of the Taj Mahal through the Great Gate is truly impressive. Built in 1648, it is considered the finest example of Mughal architecture, combining Indian, Persian and Islamic styles. While earlier Mughal construction was made of red sandstone, this was built with white marble inlaid with semi-precious stones. The decorative work on the interior is very intricate and lovely. While we could only see the red sandstone surrounding buildings from the exterior, they had matching decorations. Over two million people visit this UNESCO World Heritage Site every year. Luckily we arrived early in the morning, so it wasn’t too crowded. 
There was no way that we could come this far and not see the Taj Mahal. We had a 6:30 a.m. train to Agra (population 1.7 million people). Unlike our last experience at the train station, this time everything went off without a hitch (although Jimmy was disappointed that we didn’t see the con man so we could con him back). The first class train car was quite nice and included breakfast. Didn’t manage to take any photos out the window to show the enormous amount of trash. After seeing a lot of cows rummaging through the trash heaps filled with an amazing amount of plastic bags, Jimmy said it’s too bad that no one’s invented edible bags. While we normally like to walk around any city that we visit, we’d had enough of Delhi to know that hiring a driver for the day made more sense. Of course, we didn’t realize that the driver would then invite his friend along to play tour guide, but the price was ridiculously low and he was very helpful.
If I had but one word to describe what I experienced of Delhi, I’d say Chaos. Perhaps the disorganized encounters at the Indian Embassy in Holland should have forewarned me, but it was nothing compared to the real thing. I traveled a lot in the Far East in the 90’s, but that also didn’t prepare me for the jostling crowds and the insane traffic. Even the markets were hard to walk through as bike rickshaws were constantly trying to squeeze through the narrow paths and there were rarely sidewalks. Traffic lights were rare in the market area and crosswalks were completely nonexistent. I’m usually pretty daring after years of jaywalking with the Hash, but I froze and Jimmy had to drag me across several streets. While I am glad that we went, I won’t be rushing back.
Guess you know that the milk’s fresh when you see the goat right there at the dairy. There weren’t a lot of animals at the market, but we did come across a few monkeys that were begging, some stray dogs and one large cow that was tied up. As we headed to the subway (which was very modern and clean, but with a very haphazard security system), we passed through the blacksmith section of the market where you could find a plethora of metal parts and tools.
Actually, we never did see a candle stick maker, but we did see a lot of other things being made in the Delhi market. These fellows at the baker were very happy to have their pictures taken and even asked to see the screen to make sure they looked good. We bought five big pieces of their fresh bread, which turned out to be our dinner.
