My Last Big Trip (for now...): Agra

It’s wedding season in India. In Hinduism, the several weeks that follow the Diwali holiday is an especially auspicious time to get married. As such, there are weddings literally every day of the week. Anyone who has been to an Indian wedding knows they are no small affair. As we arrived in Agra, we were held up in traffic by at least three wedding processions that included grooms on horse-back and marching bands. All the wedding venues were covered in flowers and Christmas lights and apparently more than one bride’s father decided to spring for fireworks to mark the occasion.

Our hotel in Agra was supposed to resemble a Maharaja’s palace, but more importantly, we had our best meal in North India at the hotel restaurant. Chicken Tikka Masala, Naan, and Saag Paneer. I was worried that we were ordering all the American-ized Indian dishes, but they were so much better than any Indian restaurant at home. For dessert I ordered the Gulab Jamun, which I don’t normally order, but I’m glad I did. It was different than any I had tasted before – it had pistachios and saffron inside each ball – it was delicious.

The next day we headed out early to see the two major sites in Agra: the Agra Fort and the Taj Mahal. The fort was actually a huge complex that included several palaces inside. The palace was home to the emperor who built the Taj Mahal. The remains of the rooms are all incredibly ornate and intricate. There were fresco paintings, marble carvings, and marble in-lay work in which gem stones were used to create flowers and other designs. This same type of marble work adorns the Taj Mahal with tens of thousands of gem stones.

The Taj Mahal is difficult to describe in words. Like the Treasury building at Petra, it was one of the places I was most looking forward to seeing. Our tour guide said that when President Clinton visited the Taj, he wrote in the guest book that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who have seen the Taj Mahal in person and those who haven’t. He has seen much more of the world than I have (and is obviously smarter and more eloquent), so I don’t know that I can make such a sweeping statement, but it was as striking to experience in person as I thought it would be. Everyone knows the story of how it’s a monument to love, but it was its sheer beauty and intricate detail that I was struck by. Seeing it in photos, you don’t see all the intricate carvings and marble in-lay work that surround the entrances. Arabic writing is carved in the white marble and inlaid with black marble and there are floral designs with gem stones. The four minarets that surround it are aren’t perfectly straight – they were built at slight angles so that if there was an earthquake they would fall away from the main building and not destroy the tombs. The gardens are perfectly landscaped and it wasn’t too crowded when we were there. There were, of course, the usual hawkers and scammers trying to sell you things or take “professional photos,” but somehow they couldn’t ruin the experience