One of the Great "Seven"

A 4:30 AM pick up at the Lemon Tree was BRUTAL, but after rain for most of the week, the skies cleared and our departing flight taxied away from the gate on time. Even so, we left about an hour late.

Meanwhile, we're traveling "two cards short of a full deck," as neither Om nor Danny decided to make the trip this weekend.

Our airline, SpiceJet, is a rapidly growing regional carrier. We're traveling direct, about 800 miles to Delhi and back, with a single night stop over. Our tickets are& about $170(US). A flight of about the same distance - say from Philly to Chicago - costs a little more than $400 with taxes and fees. No wonder there is so much pressure to locate businesses here!

Our Delhi arrival at Indira Gandhi International Airport was uneventful. Still, the airport here is a little more intimidating than Kerala - massive by comparison, something between the likes of Gatwick (UK) and JFK (USA) in size and scope. It's the primary international airport of the National Capital Region of Delhi, located about 10 miles southwest of New Delhi. Now that Terminal 3 is open, it's the busiest airport in India and South Asia's largest aviation hub, with over 46 million passengers annually. Planned expansion will increase capacity to 100 million passengers by 2030!

There, we met our driver and settled in for a six hour journey to Agra. The drive certainly wasn't as scenic as our ride through Kerala and we saw many more signs of the pervasive poverty that one hears so much about. And by the way, compared to Hyderabad, the dust is imposing, even oppressive in Delhi and Agra. that's because these cities and Jaipur, for that matter, are much closer to the Thar Desert, also known as the Great Indian Desert.

During the drive, we had our first uncomfortable experience at the hands of "merchants" trying to sell their wares to tourists. Our driver had to stop along the road to pay what he described as "local taxes" and the instant he got out of the van and walked away, we were swarmed by several people hoping to get both our attention and our money. We locked the doors and waited nervously as a man with a monkey on a leash approached! An aggressive postcard vendor appeared on our other side.

The man with the post cards knocked on my window, yelling about the great price he could give us. Meanwhile, the large monkey jumped onto the van and hung on near Kalie's window. Soon enough another man with a cobra in a basket showed up. Fortunately, they all retreated when our driver came back. Needless to say we were very happy to be on the road again.

And just so you know, though we did not see them in Delhi - we were just passing through - monkeys are a big problem there. Wild packs are attracted to the city by locals who feed them. Not kidding! Others leash and train the monkeys, then use them to extort alms from pedestrians. The same could have happened to us, if we had not been quick enough to lock our doors. Look at the size of those things!!

At about 5 pm we reached Agra, picked up our tour guide Raj (who, though it took a while to discover and confirm, was included in the price of our tour package). Finally, we headed to our goal, the Taj Mahal.

The "Seven Wonders of the World" was at one time a single list of seven sites known to the Ancient Greeks as the most notable in their world. Since then, many "seven wonders" lists have been developed. An historical foundation complied the most well known of these, the "Modern Seven Wonders of the World" through world-wide voting on 21 finalists. The Colosseum in Rome is on both the original and the modern list. The Taj Mahal is first on the latter.

The Taj was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal (meaning "chosen one of the palace") who died while giving birth to their fourteenth child in 1631. Eventually the Emperor was deposed by his own son and imprisoned in the nearby Red Fort. Among the several reasons for this was that Dad spent too much money on monuments and things! Upon his death, he too was buried in the Taj Mahal. Because of the grief and tragedy associated with the lives of the Prince and Princess, the edifice was called "a tear drop on the face of eternity" by the Noble Laureate Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore.

While the white, domed, marble mausoleum is the most familiar image of the structure, the Taj is actually an integrated complex of buildings. Construction began in 1632 and was completed around 1653. We learned that a unique feature of Indian marble is that it changes color depending on the amount and direction of the sunlight.

It's difficult to actually describe the grandeur of the building. What was really remarkable was that it looked just like all the pictures and postcards. No major buildings are allowed to be built behind or around the Taj, so the backdrop to the view that you get really is just clear blue sky, really. We spent a lot of time walking around outside and taking pictures before going into the tomb, which is actually a replica. The crypt of entombment is located far below the re-creation tourist get to see. Because it is a mausoleum, it IS a sacred place. There is no interior lighting and the area accessible to the public is quite small. I've borrowed a picture from the Internet, just to illustrate what we saw.

When we first arrived, we paid a significantly higher foreigner's entrance fee (750 rupees compared to locals who pay only 20). However, this did work in our favor, since we got to be in the VIP line, a BIG advantage considering how many Indians were also visiting the Taj. When we came back out, the sun was starting to set, so we left and did a little bit of shopping.

We visited a Petha shop to buy sweets to bring back to the office. Petha is a translucent soft candy from North India and Pakistan. It's made from the ash gourd, a vegetable, also known as winter melon or white pumpkin. We also visited a jewelry store that specialized in the Star of India stone. Everyone made purchases! Soon we were back at our hotel, ate dinner, and turned in for an early night.

Our hotel was nicer and more comfortable than our hotel in Munnar and our dinners were good.

Breakfast was included and they had an "omelet guy," but the spread was nothing like the Lemon Tree. The things world travelers must endure. But somebody has to do it!

The next morning we headed out at 7:45 to visit Faterpur Sikri, a large complex of monuments and temples. The city is in the Agra district of the state of Uttar Pradesh. It was established in 1569 by the Mughal emperor, Akbar and served as the capital of the Mughal Empire from 1571 to 1585.

After several military victories, Akbar decided to shift his capital from Agra to this new location 23 miles West on the Sikri ridge, to honor the Sufi saint Salim Chishti, who foretold the birth of his son. Here, he constructed a walled city that took 15 years to complete. During this time, royal palaces, courts, a mosque, private quarters and utility buildings were all built. Originally, named Fatehabad - Fateh meaning "victory" in Arabic, the city was eventually called Fatehpur Sikri.

The easy availability of sandstone in the neighboring areas made it the construction material of choice and consequently, all the buildings here were made of the red sandstone. The Imperial Palace complex consists of a number of pavilions arranged in formal geometry on a large expanse of level ground. The pattern is derived from Arab and central Asian tent encampments. It is widely considered to be one of the best preserved collections of Mughal architecture in India and an especially important example of the diverse architectural influences of this part of the world.

The most interesting thing about this place was that King Akbar had three wives, each of a different religious tradition - Hindu, Muslim and Christian. Local historians claim that they were the inspiration for the variety of architectural styles seen here, which feature symbols from all three religions and also the Star of David.

More "native interest" in us "white kids" from America.

We continued to be hounded by merchants each time we left one of the complex's buildings. They certainly didn't seem to want to take no for an answer! This made our visit a little more stressful, but it was very impressive place nevertheless.

We spent about an hour and a half there before getting back in the van, stopping for lunch and driving the five hours back to Delhi to catch our flight back to Hyderabad.

Excursion #2 is in the books! Thanks everyone.