Kwilting with Kats: India Textile Tour Day 3

Magnificent

Front entrance, Akbar the Great tomb

Waiting for the train

Waiting for work

Up really early, and on the bus by 5:00 to catch the train to Agra. Trip through city streets already waking up to the train station. Indian train stations are a whole story unto themselves. Noisy, crowded and smelly. (Indian men will urinate ANYWHERE.) Caught the train with no problem and off to Agra.

Akbar the Great's tomb

Bus was waiting and we got our garlands and off to Sikandra, a suburb of Agra, where we visited Akbar the Great's Tomb. This was built from 1605-1613, although Akbar had planned and started the tomb in 1600. Lots of marble mixed with red sandstone in about a 20 acre piece of ground. Long walks in the hot sun, but at least the humidity wasn't too bad.

All at once, there it is

After visiting the tomb we went to lunch in Agra, then on to the Taj Mahal. I was very surprised by the area around the Taj. When I visited in 1977 the road outside was a typical, chaotic, Indian road. This has all been removed, and you park and are driven up to the entrance in an electric vehicle. This is to reduce the pollution that was destroying the marble of the monument. Through security, then everything is as it was earlier. The Taj is wonderfully white. Mud packs were used to remove the staining of pollution. In my pictures you will see scaffolding around the corner minarets where this process is on-going.

Masses of people, as Monday was a holiday for some religious festival, with myriads of foreign tourists, of which I was one. Hot and humid, with thunderstorms in the distance. I sat and admired the

Entrance to the Agra Fort

scene: the Taj does not disappoint.

Off to the Agra Fort, about a mile away from the Taj. By this time I was really tired, and elected to stay in the bus since I had seen the Fort before. Ninety-four acres, really, a walled city, was more than I could take at this time.

Back to the train station, then bussed to the hotel---wow, I'm tired.