Agra, India - April 27 part 2

Fatehpūr Sikrī

After the Taj Mahal visit and a quick breakfast we are off again this time to a place called Fatehpūr Sikrī. Although this site is only 35K from Agra is takes about an hour to get there. Fatehpūr Sikrī our third UNESCO heritage site for the day is the site of what the Mughal emperor, Akbar built in 1601 as the capital of the area until the water from the lake nearby dried up and the capital was moved to the Agra Fort. Although the drive takes much longer than it would at home, there is much, much more to look at along the way than there would be at home.

Taj from the fort

monkeys at the fort

Agra is 200K south of Delhi on the Yamuna River with 80% of its sewage ending up in the river. Agra is home to 1.6 million inhabitants. Agra and the area around it, is based on agriculture and most of what there is to look at is based on that. There were dung patties all along the way…women (only women do this) making patties, drying patties, piled patties. There was also cows, goats, and crazy traffic to watch to make the time pass.

ceiling carving at the fort

water buffalo crossing the river

We were also able to visit the Agra Fort today. This, as is the Taj Mahal, is a UNESCO heritage site. This fort built in 1565 was where the Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his son – the most told story was that the Shah while a prisoner could still see the Taj he built from across the river. There are a series of buildings which really resemble a palace with beautiful views of the Taj Mahal.

random cow

bushel of patties

This was probably our hottest day yet. Thankfully it wasn’t totally humid as the temperatures were well over 40 degrees. We had a temperature gauge in our hotel room (a very cool feature) that at one point read 44 degrees! We were able to cool off a bit for about an hour at our hotel before we were off again for our sunset visit to the Taj Mahal.

more random cows



outside wall of fort

 There was really not much to this visit that was different from our morning’s visit other than the fact that there were significantly more people – these people being Indian tourists. As I said in my last post the majority of visitors to the Taj are Indian tourists and this was obvious from looking around.