Agra and the Taj Mahal

The fog we hit at Bharatpur and its effect on the trains worried me, so I checked out our later bookings only to find that our Agra to Varanasi overnight train had been rescheduled to not stop at Agra.  After some furious checking on the internet I managed to get a refund and book new trains and flights.  After the Birder's Inn we then took a taxi to our hotel in Agra, arriving in the still fog bound city before lunch on 4th January.

Our approach to the Taj Mahal was eliptical.  That afternoon we attempted to walk from our hotel in search of a view, but ended up getting hot, bothered and tired as we tramped the dusty traffic choked streets, before getting an auto rickshaw back.  On our walk through the dirty back streets of Agra we saw the most incredible squalor, including at one point a small herd of pigs wallowing in the waters of an open drain in a crowded slum. 


On the 5th we visited Agra Fort which should have a fine view of the Taj, but the fog stubbornly refused to clear.  Then we got an auto rickshaw to the Mehtab Bagh, the gardens on the other side of the Yamuna river from the Taj, where it finally revealed itself to us.  Finally, on the 6th we entered the Taj itself via the East Gate and actually got to see it close up, the thousands of tourists with us reduced to ants by its sheer scale.  I guess the thing that surprised me most, apart from its size, is the colour, which close up is more grey and marbled than I expected, well it is made of marble after all.  Conscious that we would probably see it this one time in our lives we lingered and looked and looked.

While in Agra we stayed in the Grand Imperial Hotel, nearer the centre of the City rather than the tourist places by the Taj.  It was as we had hoped a faded bit of colonial grandeur a bit down on its luck.  Lovely chandeliers, old furniture and decent food and overly attentive service.  At breakfast one morning Sue observed one of the waiters picking something off his shoe and then flicking it absent-mindedly at the buffet.

On the 7th, our last day, we had time to kill before our evening train to Delhi and so went to the Ram Bagh, the oldest Mughal garden in India and in a very dodgy part of town.  Later we took an auto rickshaw to Palliwal Park, where Sue fulfilled a lifetime's ambition by seeing a Bittern, which I managed to photograph.