Entries about taj mahal

A day in Agra

Taj Mahal seen from Agra Fort

Mention Agra – indeed, mention India – and most people will picture the Taj Mahal. And with good reason. It is a beautiful building with a beautiful, haunting story to tell. But Agra is so much more besides.

Agra’s fort is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a significant example of evolving Mughal architecture. The beautiful Itmad-ud-Daulah, sometimes called the “Baby Taj”, is a small jewel, especially when seen in the late afternoon light as we did. And not far away is the abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri, one of my favourites among the many places we visited on this trip.

We only spent a day here – long enough to see the main sights, but too little to feel I really got to know Agra. But I liked what I saw. After the mania that is Delhi, driving Agra’s relatively calm, but still fascinating, streets was a pleasure. Already we were starting to see another side of India, and one that I really liked.

Travelling to Agra

We came to Agra by train from Delhi, a journey of about two hours. It was an early start as the train left Delhi at 6.00 AM, while it was still more or less dark. But the sun was soon up and we enjoyed the views of the surrounding countryside in the misty morning light. It is a flat landscape so there is nothing spectacular to see, but we found it interesting. Taking photos of the passing views wasn't really an option however, as the windows were both dirty and double glazed, making it hard to focus.

We travelled in a 2nd class air-conditioned coach. The ticket price includes a meal served to your seat by "Meals on Wheels" but as we had a packed breakfast provided by our Delhi hotel we skipped that. We were also given newspapers (English language) but we were too busy looking out of the window to bother with those either.

The fare was a little under 800 IR per person – about £8. The train arrived only a couple of minutes late in Agra where we had five minutes to get ourselves and our luggage off the train - no problem! We were met by a rep from the travel company and our driver Mehar who had driven down from Delhi, and we were soon on our way to our hotel.

That hotel was the ITC Mughal Hotel, which is probably one of the best hotels in Agra but didn’t fully live up to our initial positive impression. Our room (one of the standard Mughal rooms) was large and pleasant, with a king size bed, some seating, and all the usual facilities. The bathroom was also good and well equipped with towels, toiletries and a hair-dryer. I like the little touch of rose petals on the towels.

The hotel entrance and lobby are rather grand and the décor quite opulent. A shame then that the exterior is so ugly - reminiscent of an English council building perhaps. Of course when you are inside enjoying the facilities you are less aware of that. And the facilities are good - a good sized swimming pool, a spa (we had no time to visit either of these), a large restaurant serving buffet meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and another smarter restaurant, Peshwari, where we treated ourselves to dinner and a bar in the lobby.

The promised view of the Taj Mahal is less than impressive – to see it you must climb several flights of stairs to a small outside terrace from where that famous building can be glimpsed across the rooftops. It is a view, but not one worth choosing this hotel for!

View of the Taj from the hotel's rooftop

We should have really liked this hotel, given its overall quality, but were left with the impression that with the exception of the Peshawri restaurant, it is a little soulless and a little too full of itself – a place that focuses on style more than substance.

Still, we were here to see the sights, and those did 100% live up to expectations!

The Taj Mahal

Our itinerary had specified a sunset visit to the Taj Mahal but when we arrived in Agra our guide, Saurav, suggested going there straight away as the light would be nicer in the morning and the crowds a little less – especially since it was a Sunday and a popular day for Indians to visit. We took up his proposal so were there by about 9.00, but already it was very busy. But crowds or no crowds, it is still an amazing sight and one not to be missed. And besides, in the extensive gardens there are places you can escape the mass of people and enjoy the bird song while reflecting on this magical place.

There is possibly no more famous building in the world, so before you visit you will have seen very many photos and think you know what to expect. I was prepared to be disappointed, just in case it didn’t live up to those expectations (I almost wrote, “in case it didn’t live up to the hype” but that’s perhaps a bit harsh). I even half-expected not to be impressed, but of course I was. There’s a reason why the Taj Mahal is so acclaimed after all – it is truly beautiful. And there is a beautiful, if sad, story behind it.

The Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, grandson of Akbar who had built the great fort here in Agra, was a lover of great art and architecture, responsible for some of the Mughal Empire’s most lovely and enduring buildings. As was usual at that time, he had a number of wives, but his favourite among them was Mumtaz Mahal whom he had married more for love than political expedience.

He was grief-stricken when she died in childbirth in 1631, giving birth to their 14th child (as our guide told the story, he also felt guilty that he had expected too much of her in that respect). After a period of mourning in which he shut himself away from the world, he emerged inspired to build a tomb for her that would be a paradise on earth. The Taj Mahal is the result.

But the emperor was not left to mourn his beloved here. Soon after its completion, in 1658, he fell ill. His son Dara Shikoh took on the role of regent but was challenged and overthrown by another son, Aurangzeb. The latter declared Shah Jahan unfit to rule (according to our guide, basing this on his extravagance in spending so much on wonderful new buildings and patronising the arts) and had him put under house arrest at nearby Agra Fort.

There he was forced to live out his remaining years in a few small rooms, from which he could see, but never visit, the tomb of his beloved Mumtaz Mahal. My photo shows the only view he had.

Taj Mahal: the great gate and bazaars

Jilaukhana with Darwaza-i rauza beyond

Arriving at the Taj Mahal you pass first through an outer forecourt, the Jilaukhana. On its northern side is the great gateway to the main tomb complex, while on the other three sides are the gates leading to the outside world. We entered through the eastern one of these. From here, and from the western gate, paths lined with colonnades that once held small shops, the bazaar, lead you to the centre of the courtyard. This area was a sort of buffer zone between the everyday world outside and the paradise Shah Jahan sought to create within. Here visitors would dismount from their horses or elephants and refresh themselves before entering the tomb. And if it seems incongruous to have a bazaar in paradise, the emperor was only thinking to satisfy every possible need of his beloved wife entombed there.

Also in this courtyard are the small tombs of two of Shah Jahan’s other wives, and the sleeping quarters of the tomb attendants. From here you pass through the great gate or Darwaza-i rauza, from where you will get your first glimpse of the mausoleum itself. Our guide likened the gate to a woman’s veil, beautiful in its own right but hiding a much greater beauty within until the point when she chooses to lift it. Certainly if the gate were the only building here it would be considered worthy of our attention. It is built on a grand scale, from red sandstone and white marble, and ornamented with some of the pietra dura or parchinkari work which characterises Moghul architecture under Shah Jahan in general, and the Taj Mahal in particular. Inscriptions from the Koran run around the arches on both sides. These get slightly larger the higher on the gate they are placed, to reduce the appearance of skewing when viewed from below. One of the quotations reads:

But for most visitors this gate is just a small interruption on their quest to see the tomb itself, and everyone funnels through the narrow space before pausing in wonder and, in this modern age, raising countless cameras and smart phones to capture the iconic view. It reminded me a little of the experience of visiting Petra and getting your first sight of the Treasury as you emerge from the Siq – you know it is there, and you know what it looks like from countless photos, but still it takes your breath away.

Immediately inside the gate on either side of you are galleried arcades raised on a few steps. These arcades were used during the rainy season to distribute alms to the poor, but nowadays offer shade to weary tourists and a gathering spot for guides waiting for their charges to finish their tour, as well as some great distance shots of the Taj itself as, standing here, you are raised a little above the heads of the throngs of visitors in the gardens below and can frame the tomb nicely in the arches of the arcade (the photo below was taken by our guide, Saurav, to show us his own favourite view).

Taj Mahal: Charbagh gardens

While the setting and surroundings of the Taj Mahal are lovely, you can’t get away from the fact that everyone is here to see one thing – the exquisite tomb itself. This is set at some distance from the great gate, separated from it by gardens in the Persian charbagh style – that is, divided into four parts, and each of these again into four. The outer four squares on each side are planted with trees, while the inner four are lawns. The north-south axis is a long water tank that provides the classic reflection of the tomb building, while the other divisions are pathways. Most people follow the path along the water towards the tomb, being the most obvious and direct route, but Saurav advised that we walk along the path that parallels this on the left, and return by the right-hand equivalent. This has several advantages – you are away from the large proportion of the crowd, you have the shade of the trees (the sun was already very hot at about 9.30 AM), you get some interesting and different perspectives for your photos, and you arrive at the tomb at the point where you need to be to ascend the platform for entry.

The charbagh style of garden is intended to symbolise the four flowing Rivers of Paradise, which fits with Shah Jahan’s concept of building a paradise on earth in which his beloved would lie. Islamic texts describe paradise as a garden filled with trees, flowers and plants, and with four rivers springing from a single central source. Very often (as in the case of Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi) the tomb would be placed at this central point. But here it is at one side, on the river’s bank, and furthermore, there is no east-west water tank. It is possible that Shah Jahan was signalling a move towards a more compromised secular version of the classic charbagh in which the imperative of design overtook that of adherence to religious belief and tradition. But it is also possible that he conceived of the river as that east-west axis, given that his design encompassed part of the north bank where he built a “Midnight Garden”. If the latter is seen as being part of the Taj Mahal’s charbagh garden, then the classic principles can be seen to be in place.

Taj Mahal: the tomb

And so we arrive at the tomb … This is what we have all come to see, and it doesn’t disappoint, although for me the most magical view of all was the distant one when it appeared to float and shimmer lace-like in the heat of the sun.

It stands on a raised marble platform close to the river. At the four corners of the platform are identical minarets (symmetry is everything here). These are over 40 metres tall and are designed as working minarets, with a balcony at the top from which a muezzin can call the faithful to prayer. These are each topped by a canopy or chhatri which echoes those on the main structure. Interestingly the minarets are built to incline fractionally away from the platform on which they stand so that should they collapse they would fall away from the tomb and not damage it.

And so to the tomb. To access it you must ascend to the platform on the left side as you look at it. The long queue will probably be of Indian tourists but your much more expensive ticket allows you to bypass this so join the shorter one. Before doing so you must put on the shoe covers that will be issued to you near the foot of the steps – I believe these are more to protect the marble than for any other reason.

Once on the terrace you get your first close-up look at the structure. One thing that may strike you, as it did me, is the intricacy of the work. From a distance, as you emerge through the great gate, the building appears delicate, like the jewel box to which it is sometimes compared. Once you stand at its foot you get a true sense of its size, which, while not massive, is certainly greater than it appeared from afar (although the figures of other visitors in those distant views do give a clue as to the scale). It is 561 feet (171 metres high) and four storeys in total, although one of these is the basement, hidden within the terrace, where the actual graves of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan lie. Its layout is of a square, 180 feet (55 metres) wide, with the corners cut off to form an eight-sided structure.

The figure eight is very significant and found a lot in Mughal architecture. Each side has at its centre a large pishtaq (vaulted archway) with two similarly-shaped balconies stacked one above the other on either side, and again on the chamfered corners. This design is repeated on all four sides of the building – that symmetry again. The marble dome that tops the structure is 115 feet (35 metres) high and about the same in width. The four chhatris, one in each corner, echo its shape as well as that of the ones that top the four minarets.

While the lines and style of this structure are heavily influenced by Persian Muslim tradition, the decoration owes much to Hindu culture, although in line with Islamic beliefs no animal or human figures are portrayed, and the calligraphy is all quotations from the Koran. The decorative elements fall into three main types – carved marble, the aforementioned calligraphy and inlay work known as pietra dura (from its origins in Italy) or parchinkari, sometimes written as two words, parch kari, the Indian term. The designs of the latter are figurative vines with flowers and leaves and the stones used for these inlays include semi-precious ones such as jade (imported from China) and turquoise (from Tibet). Altogether 28 different types of semi-precious and precious stones were used here or in the interior. The carvings on the panels near the base are also mostly floral and are highly polished, while more geometric designs are used elsewhere, e.g. in framing the pishak. The calligraphy is created with inlays of black marble or jasper and is very stylised. Like that on the great gate, the upper panels have a slightly larger script to reduce the effect of distance.

The interior is divided into a network of chambers – a central one holding the memorial cenotaphs (the actual ones are as mentioned in a parallel chamber immediately below) and eight surrounding ones, linked by passages. The reason for this arrangement of actual burial chamber below a symbolic one is two-fold. It allows for the bodies to lie in a relatively plain space, as dictated by Muslim tradition, while their status is reflected above in a gloriously decorated one, and by placing the upper cenotaphs immediately above the lower ones, it also ensures that no one can walk directly above the bodies – also forbidden in Muslim tradition. This is the only place in the Taj Mahal where you will see the symmetry broken. Mumtaz Mahal’s cenotaph occupies the very centre of the chamber while her husband, Shah Jahan, lies to the west of her.

The decorative elements of the Taj reach their pinnacle here. The inlay work is done with precious stones and is lit, albeit dimly, by the sunlight filtering through intricately carved window screens. For a small tip (our guide suggested 50 IR) unofficial attendants here will shine a torch on the stones, demonstrating the depth of their glowing colours. Officially no photography is allowed, but I saw that just about everyone was taking pictures and not being challenged so I followed suit with a quick shot – without flash, of course (although some were even using this, it seemed to me both disrespectful and a destroyer of atmosphere).

Pause for a moment here to remember the reason for all of this – the expression of one man’s love for his queen and his grief at her passing. Then, when you have seen your fill of all the richness, you emerge, blinking, into the hot sun on the river side of the platform base.

Taj Mahal: river terrace and other buildings

As you emerge from your visit inside the chamber of the tomb you find yourself on the far side, where the platform overlooks the river Yamuna. Here we found welcome shade immediately beneath the tomb, as did many other visitors, and sat for a while on the cool marble. We also enjoyed the views of the river and on the far side some very down to earth scenes of daily life that contrasted a little oddly with the richness around us (later that day we were to find ourselves on that side of the river, observing the Taj Mahal from a different perspective).

From here you walk around the exterior and back to the front. On either side of the main tomb you see apparently identical mosques in red sandstone and marble, but appearances in this case are deceiving. Only the one to the left of the tomb, as you face it, was built as a mosque (a purpose it still serves today), while the one on the right, known as Jawab (meaning “answer”) was built purely to preserve the symmetry of the complex. It differs from the mosque only in two respects, neither visible from outside – it lacks a mihrab, the niche in a mosque's wall facing towards Mecca, and its floors have a geometric design rather than the mosque’s outlines of prayer rugs. It was formerly used as a guest house for important visitors to the Taj Mahal.

To descend from the terrace, you go back to your starting point at the front but head down the stairs leading to the left of the marble platform, where you can remove and throw away your shoe covers. From this point we followed the shady path on this side of the garden back towards the arcades by the great gate where Saurav was waiting for us, although we had enough time to relax for a while on a bench here and to take our final looks at this iconic building.

Did it live up to my expectations? Yes indeed. And was it among the finest sights we saw on this trip? Again, yes. But interestingly, when we returned to our starting point in Delhi at the end of this trip and were asked by Rajesh what we had most enjoyed or been impressed by, it was not the Taj Mahal I first thought of but instead of the less perfect buildings in Fatehpur Sikri, Bundi and Chittaurgarh. Maybe that says more about me though than about the Taj!

Parchinkari

Parchinkari or Parch kari is the term given in India to the technique known In Europe and elsewhere by its Italian name, pietra dura. This involves inlaying marble or another hard stone with small pieces of coloured stones (often semi-precious or even precious) to create a decorative pattern or picture. In India its use reached its zenith in the time of the Mughal Empire, especially under Shah Jahan, and it is seen at its very best as an art form in the Taj Mahal.

Parchinkari detail on the main tomb

Because of this perhaps, the craft is still very much practised in Agra today, and there are a number of workshops in Agra where you can see parchinkari objects being made – and of course sold! We visited one of these after our visit to the Taj Mahal. Even if you don’t plan to buy (and we didn’t, as this work doesn’t really suit our style of décor) it is still worth a visit to one of these as you get a close-up look at the craftsmen and can really appreciate the painstaking work that goes into even a small piece of parchinkari – imagine then the work that went into the Taj Mahal! Every piece of stone has to be cut to a precise shape to fit the exact same shaped indentation on the base stone. Even a small flower can have twelve or more pieces – individual petals, stamen, stem etc. Once all the pieces of a design are in place the object is polished to a very high sheen, making the joins between them almost invisible.

Shaping the stones

Carving the indentations in the marble

Flowers and leaves in separate pieces of stone

Piecing together the flowers

My photos were taken in the workshop, in a special demonstration area set up for tourists to see the technique. Most of the pieces though are made in the workers’ homes as this is very much a cottage industry. While we were welcome to take photos here, it was not allowed in the shop display areas, for perhaps obvious reasons – although many designs are copied from or heavily influenced by those on the Taj Mahal, some are unique to each workshop and they are wary of having these imitated. Having said that, there is nothing to stop you photographing an object after you have bought it and sharing those images!

As you can imagine, the final products aren’t cheap. Prices depend not on the size of the object but the level of detail in the work, with even a small and fairly simple box costing several hundred rupees. But you get what you pay for, and you can be sure hours of work went into making it. If you see something that looks like parchinkari on a souvenir stall for just a few pounds/dollars, you can be equally sure that it’s an imitation, possibly just painted, or at best made with coloured glass rather than stone, and poorly inlaid.

Of course there is far more to Agra than the Taj Mahal, but that is for my next entry …

Akhbar’s fort

As if it were not enough to have the marvellous Taj Mahal in your city, Agra has another UNESCO World Heritage site, Agra Fort. This is part defensive structure, part royal palace – indeed, a considerable part of it is still used by the Indian military. Visits therefore focus largely on the palace buildings.

This fort was built over a period of time by various Mughal emperors, although an earlier brick fort had also occupied this site. It was Akbar, the third emperor, who had that by-then ruined fort rebuilt in red sandstone when he made Agra his capital in 1558. Later his grandson, the fifth emperor Shah Jahan, added to and altered the fort. His preference (as we can see from his most famous architectural legacy the Taj Mahal) was for white marble over red sandstone, and so we have the sort of contrast seen in my photo above.

You enter through the Amar Singh Gate, also known as the Lahore Gate, as the Delhi Gate, the largest of the fort’s four gates, is off limits to tourists as it falls within the military area of the fort. But like the latter, the Amar Singh Gate is carefully designed to maximise the fort’s impregnability, with the twisting path making it difficult for the enemy’s elephants to charge and break through the gates.

Fort walls and lamp above the gate

The first part of the fort you come to is a large garden area on one side of which is the Diwan-i-Aam or Hall of Public Audience, one of Shah Jahan’s additions (Akbar and his successor Jahangir had received petitions and held audiences in wooden structures within the fort). Despite its appearance it isn’t built in his favourite white marble but of sandstone plastered with ground white shells to resemble it. It is open on three sides and divided into three aisles. On the rear, closed side is the marble chamber or jharokha from where Shah Jahan would address the people.

Diwan-i-Aam

Fort visitors in the garden

The main area of the fort that we focused on during our relatively brief visit was the Khas Mahal (private palace) and neighbouring pavilions. This is one of Shah Jahan’s additions, built as his private residence, and was also known as Aramgah-i-Mualla (the Exalted Place of Rest) or Aramgah-i-Muqaddas (the Holy Resting Apartment). It is a small palace suite, with three main chambers behind an open platform. The suite of rooms includes the private sleeping quarters, which consist of bedrooms for Shah Jahan and his queen linked by a central larger chamber. At its north-eastern corner is an octagonal tower, the Musamman Burj, beautifully decorated and with terraces at the back overlooking the river Yamuna.

There are great views from here of the Taj Mahal. No doubt the emperor chose this spot for his private rooms in part at least for that reason, a decision that was perhaps to haunt him. Towards the end of his life his son Aurangzeb declared his father unfit to rule, probably with little foundation, and had him put under house arrest. This small suite of rooms became his prison, apart from when he was allowed out to pray at the mosque in the fort. From here therefore he would be constantly reminded of the Taj Mahal where his beloved Mumtaz Mahal was buried, but could never visit it to mourn her as he had intended.

The central chamber of the Khas Mahal is built from Shah Jahan’s preferred white marble and shows some of the same decorative touches as the Taj Mahal, including pietra dura or parchi kari flowers and vines, and carved marble friezes. The side rooms though are of red sandstone covered with white plaster made from ground shells, like the Diwan-i-Aam. They have colourful frescoes, traces of which remain, and golden roofs built in the curving bangla style which imitates the shape of Bengali thatched huts and is characteristic of 17th century Mughal architecture.

The Khas Mahal overlooks a garden, Anguri Bagh, seen in my photo below. This is laid out in the charbagh style, i.e. divided into four, and within each section low red sandstone walls separate beds of ground cover plants. It is assumed that grapes once grew here, giving it its name (angur = grapes).

Anguri Bagh, with the Khas Mahal on the left

Around the remaining sides of the garden courtyard are living quarters, thought to be those of the harem, some of which still have their original wooden doors.

Itmad-ud-Daulah

At our guide Saurav’s suggestion we took a break after visiting the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort, returning to our hotel (where we hadn’t been able to check in earlier) for a rest – very welcome after our 4.30 AM start to the day in Delhi! So it was late afternoon when we arrived at the Itmad-ud-Daulah, which proved to be a perfect time to see it, although at first I was concerned as the front was largely in shadow. This though was more than compensated for by the beautiful light on the remaining three sides and the relatively low numbers of other tourists, as I hope my photos will show.

Often nick-named the "Baby Taj”, the Itmad-ud-Daulah was built between 1622 and 1628, commissioned by Noor Jahan, wife of Jahangir the fourth Mughal emperor, for her father Mirza Ghiyas Beg. He was a Persian who had been given the title of Itimad-ud-Daulah (Pillar of the State) in return for his service at court – hence the tomb’s name. Mirza Ghiyas Beg was also the grandfather of Mumtaz Mahal, the wife of Shah Jahan whose death inspired him to build the Taj Mahal.

The tomb marks the transition between the earlier Mughal architecture, which was primarily of red sandstone with marble decorations (for example Humayun's Tomb in Delhi) to its later phase introduced by Shah Jahan, the fifth emperor, which featured white marble with pietra dura inlay, as in the Taj Mahal. Compared with the latter this is an intimate building set in a charbagh style garden on the east bank of the Yamuna river. It is built from white Rajasthani marble inlayed with semi-precious stones including cornelian, jasper, lapis lazuli, onyx and topaz to create geometrical designs, vases of flowers and more – inside and out. As well as being the first tomb in India to be built entirely from marble it is also one of the first buildings to blend Islamic and local Indian influences; largely Islamic in style, it omits the dome more usual in such buildings in favour of an Indic-looking kiosk with a roof ornamented with lotus flowers.

Although built for her father, a number of Noor Jahan's other relatives are also interred in the tomb. Her father and mother lie side by side in the central chamber, where the asymmetrical arrangement of the cenotaphs (mother in the centre, father to one side) also presages the Taj Mahal. The cenotaphs in the side chambers are those of the remaining family members buried here.

There is a lovely story told about Noor Jahan and her father. Mirza Giyas Beg was a poor merchant living in Persia who moved to India with his pregnant wife and three children in search of a better life. On the way they were attacked by robbers who stole all they had. It was around that time that his wife gave birth to a girl. They did not have enough money to feed their new born baby, Mehrunnisa, and took the tough decision that they must abandon her. Before they could do so they found a caravan travelling to India, which they joined. They ended up at the court of the Mughal emperor, Akbar, who made Giyas Beg a diwan – a treasurer. He did well in this role and his status at court grew, serving both Akhbar and his son and successor Jahangir, leading to the award of that title of Itmad-ud-Daula – “Pillar of the State”. The daughter grew up to become the wife of Jahangir and took a new name, Noor Jahan: the Light of the World.

I have read that the gardens that surround the tomb of Itmad-ud-Daula were planted with flowers, but when we visited they were being dug up and replanted. However we didn’t mind too much because when we went round to the rear side of the mausoleum, facing the river, we saw that there were lots of macaque monkeys in the garden, whose antics gave us lots of pleasure.

These are Rhesus Macaques, common throughout India. They are brown or grey, with a medium length tail (usually a little over 20 cm) and a pink face. They live in large troops (up to 200 in number) and their native habitats are grasslands and mountains, but they have become very comfortable living alongside humans and are increasingly moving into urban areas, as we saw. And while we may find them cute and fun to watch, for the locals they pose something of a problem, stealing food and other items too. No doubt here they pick up plenty of scraps dropped by visitors and may also have been searching for seeds etc. thrown up as the gardeners worked. They were also grabbing a drink from a leaky hose, although the one in my second photo, who had mistaken some dropped tissues for food, may have bitten off more than he could chew!

While the Taj Mahal may be your main object in coming to Agra, do make time to visit this tomb too. As well as contributing to your understanding of the Taj’s architecture, it has a quiet beauty of its own and a rather special atmosphere.

Mehtab Bagh: another side of the Taj Mahal

If you cross the Yamuna river to the site where legend has it that Shah Jahan planned to build his own black marble mausoleum to face the Taj Mahal across the water, you can get an alternative view of Agra's most famous sight. To enter this area costs 100 IR per person (you can apparently get similar but slightly less good views for free a little down the road). We came here late afternoon, when the sinking sun gave the marble a warm glow. Note though that proper sunsets here are rare as moisture rising from the river as the air cools slightly causes the sun to disappear into the haze before it reaches the point of sinking. Nevertheless it is worth coming here to see the Taj Mahal in a different light.

You can also see the remains of the old city walls here, and will probably also get some good people shots, if these interest you, as the local women herd their goats homewards after a day's grazing.

Around Mehtab Bagh

Saurav told us that Shah Jahan planned to build a mirror image of the Taj Mahal but in black marble on the other side of the Yamuna to be his own tomb, but was overthrown by his son Aurangzeb before it could be built. I have since read though that this story is probably just a myth, based on the discovery of blackened marble ruins across the river in the Moonlight Garden, Mehtab Bagh. Excavations carried out in the 1990s found these to be merely discoloured white stones that had turned black. I loved the story of the black mausoleum though when Saurav told it to us, and the picture it conjured up, so I’m loath to let it go completely!

Local people in Agra

As everywhere we went on this trip, I enjoyed taking photos of people here in Agra - for the most part, candid photos of locals shot on the street or of Indian tourists visiting the same famous sites as ourselves. Unlike many countries we have visited, I found everywhere in India that even if people spotted my camera they seemed happy to let me continue to snap away, only occasionally indicating that I should refrain from taking their photo. Of course, with a long zoom I often went undetected, and some of these photos were taken from the car when passing through residential parts of the city.

Dinner at Peshawri

We were quite tired on the evening of our day in Agra, having been up since 4.30 AM to catch the train from Delhi, so we decided to eat in the hotel and to treat ourselves to dinner in Peshawri, the more upmarket Indian restaurant (as opposed to the multi-cuisine buffet restaurant). The food in Peshawri is all based around the tandoor oven, so there are a lot of kebab dishes and grills. We asked the waiter for advice and he recommended some dishes for us to share, including their "signature" dish, Murgh Makai Kabab - chicken pieces flavoured (I think marinated) in cream cheese, vinegar, green chilli and coriander before being grilled in the tandoor. This was absolutely delicious - succulent chicken pieces with a wonderful smoky flavour from the oven. There were six large pieces - plenty for the two of us to share. With these we had another recommended dish, Dal Bukahara, which was also very good, and some tandoori naan bread. We shared a large Kingfisher beer, and later had desserts - kulfi for Chris and a cardamom and pistachio flavoured Basmatii rice pudding for me - again, delicious.

This isn't a cheap option by Indian standards, although we could easily pay more for a less good meal at home in London - in fact it was by some way the most we paid on this trip, but it was worth the splurge and made for a lovely evening to cap our time in Agra.