Fatehpur Sikri and Agra Fort

This morning I left at 7a.m. on a train to Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal. On the train ride there I sat next to a woman from Japan, named Meg (the easy English version of her Japanese name). she was feeling sick so we didn't talk much but when we arrived she asked me if I was going to the Taj Mahal, yes, I said, and you? She was, and she told me about a tour that she was going to take of Fatehpur Sikri, Agra Fort, and the Taj mahal. I was feeling tired and knew that it was going to be an intense day so i decided to join her on her tour. We paid our pricey fee and got on a tour bus with three other people, also Japanese. Our tour guides name was Zameer.
-My name means, 'voice of the heart', he explained.

He was very knowledgeable and it was nice to learn a bit about Indian culture. The bus ride to our first stop of Fatehpur Sikri ('Fate' means victory and "pur" is a suffix for "place" used for the names of many towns in India) was an hour long, ugh. We passed more garbage and people and poverty, but also big open fields where barley, wheat and sugar cane is farmed during their respectable seasons. We finally arrived to Fatehpur which were the government grounds for the kingdom during a time and date that I don't remember. The kingdom lived there for 16 years until a water shortage led them to move to where the Taj Mahal was built. During that time th eking and queen tried to unite all religions so there were headquarters for Hindus, Muslims and Christians. What a great concept. I asked Zameer what happened, why there is no longer such tolerance.
-"The British empire arrived", he said. The following are a few pictures. The one of the ground is actually where the king and queen played chess, and they used actual people as their "playing pieces". The king and queen sat above in their headquarters and made their "moves" from there. In fact, the king and queen would never descend to the common grounds, as they were royalty and always sat above.









After that, we visited the tallest gate in Asia, shown below with my fellow Japanese tour companions.


After that, and lunch at an overpriced tourist restaurant we went to Agra Fort, another long drive of an hour and a half. We had to take a detour because there was a big traffic jam. Agra Fort became the new headquarters for the kingdom after the water shortage at Fatehpur.


At first, it just seemed like another monument and I wasn't that impressed. Then, we entered another area that resembles the Taj Mahal and I learned that it is also the place where the king that built the Taj Mahal was imprisoned. The king built the Taj Mahal after his wife died in childbirth. He was so stricken with grief that he decided to build it as a monument of his love for her. When he completed it he intended to build himself a Taj Mahal but black. The building of the Taj Mahal had taken 22 years utilizing all the resources of the kingdom. his son knew that building a second one would be frivolous, an unnecessary use of the kingdom's resources so he put his father in prison.
This is where the father was and where he could see, via a reflection of a diamond that he had, the Taj Mahal.



Ironically, as I said, these headquarters were made from the same material as the Taj Mahal, which must have been painful for the king. The Taj Mahal is layers of brick, sandstone, and then the marble of the building. What makes it so beautiful, and so romantic are the gems that decorate it. The gems were donated from different kindgoms all over the world as a gesture of honoring the queen that had died. Here is a small example of what they looked like.


Throughout the day I took notice of all of the beautiful Indians, especially the children. There were so many Indians visiting these historical sites and they were all dressed so exquisitely. however, I was afraid to take pictures, especially of the children as I didn't want to offend anyone. Here is one that I took of some women at Agra Fort. I wonder about their lives, especially their relationships with their husbands. Do their husbands love them so much that they would build a Taj Mahal for them?




As we left Agra Fort, we were bombarded again with more people trying to sell us things. I bought a lemonade and opened it and took a couple swigs. A little girl was following me, asking me for the lemonade. I don't know why, but I felt compelled to acquiesce, and I handed it to her. she looked so happy.
The little things.