The Taj
I saved one of the best for last. The Taj Mahal lives up to the hype. On my last full day of travel I got up at 4:30am so I could get down to the train station by 5:30 to catch the 6:15 train to Agra. The train only took two hours, but it took an additional 45 minutes of standing in line to buy my return ticket. Then it was off to the Taj. Wow. It is actually a whole tomb complex with large gates and opposing mosques. I know you have seen pictures, but it is hard to convey the scale of this thing. The tomb complex took 20000 people 22 years to build. At one point the British tried to auction it off for the price of its marble, but luckily someone had enough sense back then to save it. The whole complex is symmetrical. There are mosques on either side of the Taj, but only the one facing Mecca is used. The other is solely for symmetry. They are mirror images. If you find an inlaid flower of the on one side of the building, you will find that same flower at exactly the opposite side. I was impressed. Afterwards I visited yet more handicraft emporiums then the red fort of Agra. Also very impressive. The Mughals used the Agra fort as their capital for four generations before moving to Delhi. It has a view of the Taj from across the river that is very nice, but it is neat in its own right. The fort is huge, it used to be home to 30000 people. Now it is home to the Indian military so you can only visit about a quarter of it. It was a full day of sightseeing. I am glad I ended my trip on a high note.
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