Other travellers, guide books and the internet had consistently negative reviews of Agra so we only planned 24 hours there. We found it to be a fairly average Indian city, with the exception of one largish monkey who took a shine to my ice-cream and chased me for it! While growling, huffing and puffing! Fortunately the crowd converged in such a way as to separate the two of us and I was able to remain rabies free and in possession of my ice-cream.
But I digress.
Agra’s main attraction needs no introduction:
There are other neat things in Agra too. Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal, was just one in a line of incredibly powerful Mughal emperors who controlled most of northern India, Pakistan and Afghanistan for centuries. These emperors were incredibly wealthy and enjoyed the finer things in life so there were other grand buildings, beautiful gardens and amazing craftworks to admire, the like of which we have not seen elsewhere in India. We wandered around the Agra Fort and marvelled at the decadence of their lifestyles – elephant fights, exotic animal collections and walls embedded with thousands of precious stones. We were very impressed upon learning that one of the emperors had 5000 women in his harem – if you do the math, this means that he could have slept with a different woman every night for 13.7 years...
Swingin' on ropes on the streets of Agra, awesome. Entering the fort...
This is a well with rooms built into the sides all the way down, the ladies of the harem would chill out down there on hot days | Soph audiobook-ing it through the pillared area where the the Shah could be glimpsed by the amassed public, on his glittering throne no less!
And the main attraction, just like in the postcards... except for the swarming tourists (and this is the quiet season)
Wandering through the gardens & connecting buildings
White shoe covers for everyone. It's actually quite impressive to see how hard Agra is working to preserve the Taj, they actually shut down all fuel burning industry in the city keep it clean! Now everything in Agra is done by hand, the old fashioned ways.
But I digress.
Agra’s main attraction needs no introduction:
There are other neat things in Agra too. Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal, was just one in a line of incredibly powerful Mughal emperors who controlled most of northern India, Pakistan and Afghanistan for centuries. These emperors were incredibly wealthy and enjoyed the finer things in life so there were other grand buildings, beautiful gardens and amazing craftworks to admire, the like of which we have not seen elsewhere in India. We wandered around the Agra Fort and marvelled at the decadence of their lifestyles – elephant fights, exotic animal collections and walls embedded with thousands of precious stones. We were very impressed upon learning that one of the emperors had 5000 women in his harem – if you do the math, this means that he could have slept with a different woman every night for 13.7 years...
Swingin' on ropes on the streets of Agra, awesome. Entering the fort...
This is a well with rooms built into the sides all the way down, the ladies of the harem would chill out down there on hot days | Soph audiobook-ing it through the pillared area where the the Shah could be glimpsed by the amassed public, on his glittering throne no less!
And the main attraction, just like in the postcards... except for the swarming tourists (and this is the quiet season)
Wandering through the gardens & connecting buildings
White shoe covers for everyone. It's actually quite impressive to see how hard Agra is working to preserve the Taj, they actually shut down all fuel burning industry in the city keep it clean! Now everything in Agra is done by hand, the old fashioned ways.
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