We left the train today and toured Agra (the Taj Mahal) before continuing by bus to Bharatpur
(Image courtesy of VENT)
(Click on images to enlarge)
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We got ourselves packed and then joined the others in the dining car this
morning to do yesterday’s checklist before breakfast. Marie took a
moment to read us Tagore’s poem about the Taj Mahal (with its famous line,
“a teardrop on the cheek of Time”), which was a nice touch.
We all lingered in the dining car after breakfast, as the birding was really good. The first shouts were for Sarus Cranes! And then more Sarus Cranes. And then Painted Storks! There were also some Woolly-necked Storks, which I think I saw, but not well enough for counting a lifer. But I did get both the pale-phase and dark-phase Booted Eagles. (The Sarus Cranes are a life bird for us and the world’s tallest flying bird (6 feet or 1.8 meters).) |
 Dining/lounge car, Royal Rajasthan on Wheels (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon) |
 Potato harvesting |
After a while we returned to our cabin, where we sat watching the flat farmland fly by and the occasional small settlements. Whole families were out harvesting their potato patches, which looked like very hard work. They were filling bags with potatoes, and at one spot we saw a man sleeping atop a big pile of potato bags beside the road, obviously waiting for the truck to come fetch them. |
| Other people were involved in collecting and drying cowpats. We’ve become interested in the various styles of stacking the dried pats; most villages use some variant of a dome, but the designs differ from place to place. |
 Cowpat harvesting (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon) |
 Old City, Agra |
I was definitely impatient to see Agra at last. We finally arrived around 11,
an hour late. We were loaded onto a bus and driven through the old part of
the city. I fear Emperor Shah Jahan would be disappointed to see how worn the
beautiful buildings of his city are now. One still gets glimpses of elegant
stone carving, Shah Jahani columns, a beautiful facade, here and there, but for
the most part the buildings are decrepit and seem uncherished. There are too
many people with too little money to make architecture a priority, of course,
but it is sad to see such beauty lost.
 Old City, Agra |
Amar Singh Gate, Agra Fort
| As we approached the immense Agra Fort, Lee urged me to look out the window on his side to see the fort high above us, not realizing that I was just getting my first view of the Taj Mahal a couple of kilometers away in the other direction. But the fort was very much worth seeing. It was built late in the 16th Century by Emperor Akbar and greatly enhanced by his grandson Emperor Shah Jahan. It is really a walled city, not just a fort, and was much larger than I had envisioned (it covers 94 acres). The red sandstone it is built of is so beautiful that it would be hard to make an ugly building of it and the Mughals never attempted ugly. We had only an hour to spend seeing the fort; I would happily have spent longer. (And unfortunately some of it is used by the Indian military and is closed to the public, including what is considered to be its more beautiful gate.) |
| The fort has double walls and two moats, the outer one for the crocodiles and the inner for the tigers (or so we were told—we found only Rhesus Macaques). Once we were across the two moats and through the two walls, a massive red sandstone structure towered over us. We had to make a sharp turn to go through the next gate, that turn having been designed to prevent an invading war elephant from getting a running start. |
 Base of Agra Fort |
| We were led up the long ramp to the higher levels and taken first to the Shah Jahani portions of the fort. (Shah Jahan tore down many of Akbar’s buildings and replaced them with grander ones. The British later tore down more of Akbar’s buildings and replaced them with barracks.) We passed through a red sandstone gate Shah Jahan added and then beheld his first great splurge of white marble (begun in 1628), the Diwan-i-Am (Hall of Public Audience), where the Emperor appeared to his subjects each morning. |
 Shah Jahani Gate, Agra Fort |
 Diwan-i-Am (Hall of Public Audience), Agra Fort |
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Most of the Shah Jahan buildings surround a very large garden in the traditional
Mughal style with fountains and symmetrical walkways. Because fruit was grown
in it, the garden is called “Anguri Bagh” (Garden of Grapes). The
stone bed dividers in the form of cartouches are intended to make the garden
look like a carpet. I suspect it was much more beautiful in Shah Jahan’s
day than it is now.
The most interesting of his buildings at the fort is the one under the gilded copper dome at the back in this photo, the Musamman Burj or Shah Burj (Royal Tower). Intended as a residence for Mumtaz Mahal, it was begun not long before she died. It is gorgeous in the same way that the Taj is, with much of the same carved white marble and delicate stone inlay. It was good for Shah Jahan that he had enhanced the fort so handsomely, because his rogue son Aurangzeb imprisoned him in the Shah Burj for the last years of his life. |
 Anguri Bagh (Garden of Grapes), Agra Fort |
 Interior of the Shah Burj, Agra Fort |
 Detail of inlay, Shah Burj |
| The rooms of the Shah Burj were light and airy, high above the river, and had fountains and a small waterfall to cool them. Some of the marble was carved so thin that it was translucent. The ceilings were once colorfully painted; we saw an area where the original paint had been restored. |
 Interior of the Shah Burj, Agra Fort |
 Restored ceiling |
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Shah Jahan could step out onto a portico to view the Taj Mahal:
 Entrance to portico of Shah Burj, Agra Fort |
 Shah Jahan’s view of the Taj Mahal |
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When we stepped out onto that portico ourselves, we viewed the Taj further
along the river and could see that it was teeming with people. (This is both a
Saturday and part of the Holi holiday, so we had known to expect the worst.)
We then went on to a part of the fort that has been changed less since it was built by Akbar, the Jahangiri Mahal (which, despite its name, was not built by Akbar’s son Emperor Jahangir). This group of buildings dates to early in Akbar’s reign, the 1570’s, which is the same period in which the tomb of his father Emperor Humayun (which we visited in Delhi) was being built. Though quite beautiful, Akbar’s buildings seemed to me to be not quite so refined as that tomb. (I feel a great deal of empathy with Humayun, who died after tripping on his long robes while going down a stairway with his arms full of books, a fate I can readily imagine myself sharing.) |
 Leaving the Shah Burj |
 Jahangiri Mahal, western facade, Agra Fort |
| Stephanie found an apparently ill Egyptian Tomb Bat under a step in one of the courtyards of the Jahangiri Mahal. We photographed it without getting too near and then found dozens more roosting in the crevices of a nearby facade. |
 Egyptian Tomb Bat, Jahangiri Mahal |
 Where the bats hang out, Jahangiri Mahal, Agra Fort |
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When our time for the fort was up, we walked down the long ramp to get to the
gate and paused on our way to photograph a much livelier example of wildlife.
From the fort, we were driven to a hotel for lunch. I can hardly remember what I ate, except that they served more chocolate than have any of the other places we’ve lunched. Dion told us about the shopping trip planned for after lunch (Me: “You mean we’re going shopping when we could be at the Taj Mahal?”). He promised we’d keep it to a minimum. So, we were dragged off to a workshop that makes marble inlays, and I tried to accept my fate. (I keep remembering Bill Bryson’s comment, “I have long known that it is part of God’s plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth”; for me, the plan must be that I will be taken shopping.) |
 Five-striped Palm Squirrel, Agra Fort |
| Then at last, we got to go to the Taj Mahal: |
Site plan of the Taj Mahal complex
(Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
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The sectors marked on this plan correspond to:
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Our bus drove us to a place where we could transfer to a small electric bus to
go the last couple of kilometers. We had to pass through a huge fair that was
a real madhouse, but eventually we reached the East Gate (via the tan
line coming down from the top in the diagram) and entered the forecourt, the
Jilaukhana. (Unfortunately, we had no chance today to see any of the
caravanserai (the Taj Ganji), which was built to help pay for the upkeep on the
rest of the complex. As you can tell from the satellite image, it has been very
heavily modified over the centuries, though I’ve seen photographs that
allow one to make out some of the original structures hidden beneath modern
encrustations. Nor could we explore the waterworks to the west of the complex
that fed the streams and fountains of the gardens with water from the Yamuna
through a system of pumps, an aqueduct (the teal squiggly line at the bottom of
the diagram), and storage tanks.)
What can one say about the Taj Mahal? I loved it! It was like having a dream come to life, all these lovely buildings that I’ve come to know from photographs suddenly looming up before me, all much larger than I had envisioned. I had feared that it would all feel like a cliché, but it didn’t. I felt only awe. Upon coming in through the East Gate, our first view was of the Great Gate, through which one passes from the Jilaukhana into the garden. We soon also noticed the South Gate, which leads to the caravanserai, much less ornate, but elegant. |
 Great Gate, Taj Mahal |
 South Gate, Taj Mahal |
| We took some time to admire the other structures in the Jilaukhana and the front of the Great Gate before passing through it. I realized only later that I had been so absorbed by the view through the Great Gate that I entirely neglected to look around as we were passing through it. |
 Qalib kari (network tracery) on vault, Great Gate |
 View of Mausoleum through Great Gate, Taj Mahal |
| Once we were through the Great Gate, we had a full view of the Mausoleum and its minarets. It was just so stunningly lovely. The thousands of people were diminished to nothing in comparison. (But my birder’s eye noted the Black Kites taking advantage of the thermals from its dome.) |
| We gathered just inside the garden, where our local guide gave us a good orientation. I was really struck by the scale of it all. The wall tower we saw to our left is just a small circle on the site plan but is actually a building of some consequence. |
 Wall tower and double-arcaded gallery, Taj Mahal |
 Detail of front, Taj Mahal |
At that point, Dion pointed to where he’d be doing the birdwatching on the
terrace just above the river and split.
Lee and I followed the local guide and got into an unbelievable crush inside the mausoleum (which was so dark we could see barely anything). The crowd control was bizarre (they let far too many people in at once and then made them stay inside too long). People were pushing and shoving, and I could easily imagine our getting caught in a stampede. All we wanted to do was get out. When we were finally able to do so, Lee commented that it was good that we had gone to Humayun’s Tomb, because that had allowed us actually to see the inside of a Mughal mausoleum. It was a pity that we couldn’t really see the wonderful carvings and inlays of the interior of the Taj Mahal, but this wasn’t the day for it. We will have to content ourselves with the pictures in books. Once we had escaped from the Mausoleum, we joined the others on the terrace overlooking the river for the relief of not being in a crush. The breeze there was pleasant, and we enjoyed getting some new birds, including Great White Pelican and Dalmatian Pelican, side-by-side, and River Lapwings. There were also many Ruddy Shelducks, always a delight. |
| When we had calmed down a bit and had gotten a good look at the birds on offer, we went back to savor the buildings (from the outside). It was a joy to be able to get close enough really to see the fine craftsmanship of the carving and of the marble inlays, both the flowers and the elegant calligraphy (verses from the Koran). I particularly loved the rope moldings. |
 Detail of pishtaq (Mughal high portal), Taj Mahal |
 Engaged bundled colonnettes and rope moldings |
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The Mausoleum is an octagon formed by cutting the corners off a square. If you
look above the top layer of niches here, you can see a drain spout on which Amy
photographed an Egyptian Vulture, a not so pretty ornament among all that
beauty.
 Detail of corner, Taj Mahal |
 Immature Egyptian Vulture, Taj Mahal (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon) |
| We circled the Mausoleum both down on the terrace and up on the platform, wondering at the lovely details of the building. Then we had time enough to explore the Meeting Hall (which is a mirror image of the Mosque). I found its red-and-white echoes of the Taj’s all-white themes to make a wonderful contrast and to be very pretty on their own merit. |
 Assembly Hall from garden, Taj Mahal |
 View of river tower from Assembly Hall, Taj Mahal |
 Stone carving and inlay, Assembly Hall, Taj Mahal |
 View of Mausoleum from Assembly Hall, Taj Mahal |
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When it was time for us to rejoin the others, we went back through the gardens,
where we got to see many Rhesus Macaques close-up, including a number of babies
who seemed spring-wound as they bounced in and out of the trees. (The babies
were completely impossible to photograph.)
Little Swifts rose above the mosque. |
 Rhesus Macaque, Taj Mahal |
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All in all, we were at the Taj Mahal for not quite two hours. That was
definitely not enough. We made our way back to the electric bus that took us
to the real bus. There was one more shopping stop (this time at a spice
market), but the two of us and several others resolutely remained on the bus.
Even before we were out of Agra, night had fallen. As we drove through the dark city, I noticed that many of the produce vendors have installed LED lamps on their carts to attract business. It makes a pretty scene. We had about an hour and a half of driving along a divided motorway to get to Bharatpur. It was chaotic in the usual Indian way, cars sometimes driving in the wrong direction, people crossing on foot, no apparent rules for intersections. Our nice neighbor Avinash has called my attention to this video, which will give you a feeling for how traffic works in India without rules or controls. I think you will see what I mean about its being cooperative. Nevertheless, it was likely a blessing that in the dark we couldn’t see much of what was going on. |
 Produce vendor, Agra |
 The Bagh, Bharatpur |
We arrived at our stately hotel, The Bagh, and its twelve acres of 200-year-old
gardens too late to appreciate the gardens. The hotel has only 23 rooms, set in
small buildings around the grounds. We dropped our things in the building we
share with Sally and Charlie before joining the group for dinner. At dinner,
Dion gave us the surprising news that tomorrow we will be birding by bicycle
rickshaw!
Back in our room, we concluded that we were too tired to stay up long enough for me to write my journal, so we set the alarm a bit earlier and turned out the lights. I’ll doubtless regret that tomorrow. It seemed very strange to have so much quiet after the noise of the train for the past five nights. We both slept well. |
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One last comment: Having been looking at Shah Jahan’s wonderful buildings
all day reminded me of the amazing fact that there are several Rembrandt
drawings of Shah Jahan, such as this one of him with his favorite son, Dara
Shikoh.
Rembrandt somehow became aware of contemporary Mughal miniatures and made drawings from them. (Note that the Emperor has a halo here, an idiom the Mughals picked up from European paintings.) When he made this drawing circa 1654-6, Rembrandt probably had no idea of who Shah Jahan was nor knew that the Emperor had just built a glorious complex in Agra (completed only in 1653). One can imagine that the two of them would have appreciated one another’s work. |
 Shah Jahan and Dara Shikoh by Rembrandt van Rijn, ca. 1654-6 (Image courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles) |
| My birds for the day: |
| Ruddy Shelduck | Painted Stork | Great Cormorant | Great White Pelican | Dalmatian Pelican |
| Purple Heron | Eastern Cattle Egret | Black-headed Ibis | Eurasian Spoonbill | Egyptian Vulture |
| Booted Eagle | Black Kite | Sarus Crane | Black-winged Stilt | River Lapwing |
| Common Sandpiper | Rock Pigeon | Eurasian Collared Dove | Little Swift | Green Bee-eater |
| Indian Grey Hornbill | Rose-ringed Parakeet | House Crow | Common Myna |
