India. . . Day 4

Today we traveled 8 hours to the south-east of Delhi to the ancient city of Agra.  Agra was once the capital city of the Mughal kingdom .  Within Agra lies the Taj-Mahal, the Agra fort, and the “baby Taj”.  When we got to the city (which is not much of a city but rather a road with small shops on both sides) we checked into the hotel and then Clayton and I ventured out into the city on foot.  An Indian man with his own bicycle rick-shaw decided that we absolutely needed to ride his rick-shaw although we had told him no numerous times.  He followed us for quite a while until Clayton had to yell at him.  The streets here are crazy.  It is not uncommon to see cows in the middle of the roads, people jay walking across 6 lane highways and lanes in which the population pay absolutely no attention to.  We also witnessed a young man riding his elephant down the highway on the way to Agra.  There is abundant amounts of trash and rubble lining the streets (was the same in Delhi) as if the construction took place an there was no afterthought to clean up the rubble left behind.  We didn’t spend much time in the city, as we were melting in the humidity and were starting to feel a little unsafe.  We rented a tripod vehicle to drive us back to the hotel.

When we met back up with our group we were taken to Agra fort, a massive sandstone structure which was built and inhabited by six generations of Mughal emperors (of which one of them was responsible for the building of the Taj Mahal and was later imprisoned in the fort by his own son and successor).   Inside the fort were palaces made of marble and an impressive view of the Taj Mahal.  It was truly amazing!  I cannot tell you how many times I randomly broke out into song, mostly consisting of “Prince Ali” from Aladdin.