Heading out of town .....
It is early when we hit the road. We are leaving Delhi and head toward Agra.
Agra is the city where the Taj Mahal is located and I am very excited to see this famous place.
Delhi is huge and it takes a long time just to pass through before we head out. But it turns out this was the easy part.
Our bus driver has nerves of steel and is very aggressive on the road. Imagine a highway with three lanes. There are actual white lines on the road but they mean nothing. Traffic jostles back and forth , floating over the lines as though they are not even there. Vehicles look for any small space and gravitate toward it, no matter that the space is only a tiny opening and you are driving a bus. There are no signal lights... only horns. The driver glimpses an opening, hits the horn and bulldozes into the space between trucks, lorries, other buses, cars and motorbikes. Its a continual game of chicken, each betting the other will pull back, As we jam into tiny spaces other vehicles are a fraction of inch from our window. Our driver is a master. It is an urban symphony at the decibel level of a jumbo jet. We dare not look.
After several hours we near Agra but we have to make our way through that city now to our hotel. We hit rush hour, or at least the type of traffic that you associate with rush hour --- gridlock. We ever painstakingly slowly make our way across the city. Here we add a few more factors into the traffic equation. In addition to the cars and trucks and buses, etc. there are now cows, water buffalo and horse carts. Plus tuktuks jammed with at least a dozen people.
It is a slow and painful journey, but every now and then we rewarded with a glimpse of the Taj Mahal or the Red Fort in the distance. At last we arrive at our hotel, miraculously without a scrape or dent.
It is early when we hit the road. We are leaving Delhi and head toward Agra.
Agra is the city where the Taj Mahal is located and I am very excited to see this famous place.
Delhi is huge and it takes a long time just to pass through before we head out. But it turns out this was the easy part.
Our bus driver has nerves of steel and is very aggressive on the road. Imagine a highway with three lanes. There are actual white lines on the road but they mean nothing. Traffic jostles back and forth , floating over the lines as though they are not even there. Vehicles look for any small space and gravitate toward it, no matter that the space is only a tiny opening and you are driving a bus. There are no signal lights... only horns. The driver glimpses an opening, hits the horn and bulldozes into the space between trucks, lorries, other buses, cars and motorbikes. Its a continual game of chicken, each betting the other will pull back, As we jam into tiny spaces other vehicles are a fraction of inch from our window. Our driver is a master. It is an urban symphony at the decibel level of a jumbo jet. We dare not look.
After several hours we near Agra but we have to make our way through that city now to our hotel. We hit rush hour, or at least the type of traffic that you associate with rush hour --- gridlock. We ever painstakingly slowly make our way across the city. Here we add a few more factors into the traffic equation. In addition to the cars and trucks and buses, etc. there are now cows, water buffalo and horse carts. Plus tuktuks jammed with at least a dozen people.
It is a slow and painful journey, but every now and then we rewarded with a glimpse of the Taj Mahal or the Red Fort in the distance. At last we arrive at our hotel, miraculously without a scrape or dent.
The Red Fort or Agra Fort.
Sitting high atop a hill
overlooking the river and the city bf Agra sits the majestic Red Fort, so named
because it is built from red sandstone. Built in1654 by the same Moghul Emperor
who built the Taj Mahal it is a UNESCO world heritage site and more of a walled palatial city than fort. It is a massive
structure with a perimeter of over 2 kilometers. It was the capital of the
Moghul Empire.
A moat surrounds the fort, no
longer filled with water. A massive draw bridge which once protected the fort
remains open, the giant mechanisms still visible within. At one time there was
a huge door equipped with giant spikes at the level of an elephant’s head. If
invaders tried to enter the fort, they would use elephants to batter down the
doors, these spikes would be an effective way of immobilizing this threat.
The fort is in immaculate condition
given the age. We make our way up a long sloping ramp into the fort. Inside the fort are The Glass Palace (dressing room), a white marble palace, two mosques and a tower. It was both a strategic military fort and a royal residence.
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