Agra, Day 6 of the Trip

We arrived in Agra at 10 am and first went to go see the fort, which is right next to the train station. For me this was not that cool architecture, except for a mosque inside which was kind of cool. There were however amazing views of the taj. Once you look at it from a distance you realize that Disney completely ripped it off for Aladdin.



After doing a speedy tour of the fort we took a rickshaw to the main tourist area inside the walls of the old city. I had to use the overseas call to try and change my flight to after NYE, and after I had been on hold for 15 minutes and almost gotten everything sorted the phone started making fax noises and I had to hang up. Once I told the guy I wasn’t going to pay for the call because his phone was crap and I had to start over again he told me that the sound I heard must have been the hold music, which it obviously wasn’t and that it was my fault I had hung up, his phone was fine. We obviously got into a huge fight since him telling me I had confused hold music with a fax noise was utter bullshit and he wouldn’t back down from this claim. Even with Gardiner and Steffen backing me he wouldn’t admit his phone had messed up – it was ridiculous.

We were all pretty pissed off, especially me, so we went to a rooftop café with view of the Taj to calm our nerves. The view was very choice and went a long way to making me forget the incident. We also dressed up in our sumo suits and took pictures – people down below in the town were coming out of their houses to stare and point at us. . Once the waiters saw how much fun we were having they wanted to join in, so we let them have their sumo moment as well.


View from our restaurant

The Taj was incredible, so much so it is impossible to describe and you will have no idea what I am talking about unless you go to actually see it. I would say it was even more awe inspiring for me than Angkor. The whole thing is so white, and so much bigger than I ever imagined it would be.


The symmetry is also striking, down to the trees that are planted around the main building.
The only unsymetrical thing in the whole compound is the placement of the two coffins. Since he was planning on building his own Taj across the river from his wife, there was only room for one coffin in the symmetrical layout of the interior.

Location across the river where his tomb was to be constructed

Once he was added after his death his placement beside her is the only thing that throws off the symmetry of the entire compound.

We took a ton of pictures on the way out, mainly of Indians posing, but also some of ourselves, and we jumped into a bunch of random peoples photos, which they thought was very funny.



This guy was trying to recreate the picture that I am doing above, but little known to him all of his friends were doing this, he couldn't figure out why we were taking pictures of him but finally he turned around and realized it.