The Taj Mahal and Akbar's lost city

The Taj Mahal on Thursday,  May 19, 2011

Kalee Haywood, Shenetta Payne, Kate Zibluk and Sara E.McNeil at the Taj Mahal.

The Taj Mahal in Agra transcends description.

It is more graceful and intricate than any words can say.

And it’s one of history’s great love stories.   After the death of Mumtaz Mahal, third wife of Mughal emperor Shah Jhan died giving birth to their fourteenth child in 1630, the empreror mourned for two months and his hair turned from black to white. In his grief, he built the Taj. It took 22 years.

The white marble building is entirely handmade, with inlaid filagree throughout. Visitors are silent and reverent even if thousands visit each day.

We stayed overnight at the usual Indian hotel that featured sporadic electricity and internet service. The Taj is the center of the crowded, busy city of Agra, noted for its lack of services, and some Indians say, its corruption. After our visit to Agra fort the previous day, our dinner was interrupted by a dusty, sandy windstorm followed by a rare pre-monsoon cloudburst. The storm toppled a few trees around the Taj, but little damage occurred.

The Indian  government provides shuttle buses from the park entrance to the building, and it also permits the usual hucksters and hawkers to accost tourists with their efforts to sell them Taj Mahal snow globes and refrigerator magnates. We have become adept at ignoring them even after only three days.

A local boy helps Kate Zibluk find an unusual view of the Taj Mahal. When he was offered 10 rupees for his services, he said, "Not enough for what I do." I gave the young entrepreneur 50 rupees.

We reverently circled the building, taking pictures and considering Shah Jhan and Mumtal.

We then left for a tour of Fatehpur Sikri, the ghost city of Akbar the great. Akbar built a new capitol about 40 miles from Agra in the 1700s as a buffer against growing Rajastan to the west. But he found he could not sustain the city due to a lack of water, and he abandoned it to the elements only 12 years later. The outer walls still stand, and the courtyards, harems and barracks survived out in the dry scrub.

Kate Zibluk explores Emperor Akbar's private chambers at Fatehpur Sikri, the Mughal lost city.

Carl Lindquist and Sara E. McNeil take a break at the queen's private kitchen at the lost city.

An Indian soldier stands guard at the queen's study the way his ancestors did at the lost city.

We explored for a little over an hour, and then drove into Rajastan to its capitol, Jaipour, about 300 miles away. Around Fatehpour, the crowded squalor of Agra gives way to crop lands and farms. While many are still poor, the villages are neater and cleaner than the sad urban slums of Delhi and Agra.

Rajastan is mining country and the origin of the sandstone and marble of which the Mughal monuments are built. Even today, sandstone and marble cutters dominate the economy as well as farms and businesses. There is far less crowding and the roads less congested, but just as chaotic as the urban thoroughfares.

We arrived in Jaipour in the evening, and Sam, our tour guide and fixer surprised us by finding rooms at a small 19^th century hotel near the downtown. Being midweek, we were able to get our rooms upgraded to their best ones, decorated in British Raj style, with huge mahogany furniture, beds with large bedposts for mosquito netting, marble floors and other amenities.

And the internet connection works.

We are truly looking forward to our days in Jaipour.