2025: Northern India

4. Agra: The Red Fort and the Taj Mahal

As we waited for the morning train to Agra, we all noticed how different were people's attitudes to the railways; they wandered across the tracks as casually as we would cross a minor road in the UK - just a quick glance to make sure there wasn't a train approaching before proceeding casually across, or along, the tracks. Although there was a footbridge at  the station, nobody bothered to climb all those steps when simply walking across to the opposite  platform was a far easier option. Also, because the carriage doors did not have locks, people would board or leave the train as it slowly passed through the station; this was causing a problem because children were boarding the trains as they approached, then sweeping through the carriage stealing from people's pockets, tables, or overhead racks as they went, and then jumping out onto the platform and running away while the train was still moving. This explained the presence of a couple of policemen in each carriage!

When we reached Agra the coach took us to our hotel for lunch, before we set off for an afternoon visit to the magnificent Red Fort.

The Red Fort was built to be utterly unassailable. Under a hail of arrows, an attacker would have to swim across a moat filled with crocodiles before breaking through the entrance gate which was half-way up a 50ft wall, then make his way across a small courtyard filled with leopards and tigers before breaking through another gate which was set in a second 50ft high wall; after this gate was a narrow uphill corridor whose walls were inset with arrow-slits and also pipes through which boiling oil could be poured, leading to the final guarded gate. Impregnable, yes? Well, no actually, it was successfully stormed 5 times! On one of these occasions all the treasures were looted by the Persians, including the Peacock Throne and the Koh-I-Noor Diamond as well as the solid-gold wall decorations (which they melted away by lighting huge fires in the rooms). The Koh-I-Noor Diamond eventually found its way back to the British, and it is now part of the UK Crown Jewels collection.

This moat was filled with water and crocodiles.	This gate, half-way up the 50ft wall, led into a courtyard full of tigers etc.	The gate out of the courtyard led to ...	... this corridor with arrow-slits and oil-pipes in the walls	The final gate at the top of the corridor

Once inside the Red Fort, visitors would find themselves in a magnificent courtyard garden (guarded later by large cannons) surrounded by beautifully-decorated arcades. It was from these that the golden decorations were melted away by the Persians; today you can easily see the blackened lines where the gold had been, with a small section painted to illustrate how beautiful it would originally have been. Beyond this is an inner garden, as well as what was originally the harem - guarded by the Palace Eunuchs - which surrounded an artificial pond filled with fish which the ladies would amuse themselves by catching (it has since been filled in and grassed over).

The main courtyard garden and one of its cannons	The walls and ceilings of the arcades were covered in gold decorations	This section has been painted to give an indication of how it would have looked	The inner courtyard garden	This was the harem with its fishpond, now grassed over

The Red Fort also provides a distant view of the Taj Mahal. The ironic detail is that after Emperor Shah Jahan had completed the Taj Mahal in honour of his deceased wife, his son realised that its construction had cost most of the family's wealth - so when the emperor announced his intention to build a similar mausoleum for himself on the other side of the river, the son decided instead to depose his father and imprison him in the Red Fort for the rest of his life, allowing him to see a daily view of his great folly!

The next morning we were to have our own view of the famous Taj Mahal. We had another early start, because the best time to view this marble masterpiece is just after dawn when the sun has a little colour; later in the day the building simply appears white. The construction is an architectural marvel, and the fact that it is still standing in this area of earthquakes and unstable ground is a tribute to its remarkable construction methods. The whole building is set on a huge square platform, each corner of which bears a tower to ensure that the weight is not excessively concentrated at the centre, and as a further precaution each tower was built with a 6 degree lean away from the building, so that they would cause no damage if they were to fall.

The entrance gate of the Taj Mahal, just before dawn	Our first viewing as we passed through the entrance gate	There are 17 acres of garden from the gate to the Mausoleum	The Taj Mahal glows like gold in the dawn's early light
The sun glints off the precious stones that create the exquisite decorations on the walls		The internal walls are beautifully carved.	Looking back as we left, it was now white

The Taj Mahal took a team of 20,000 labourers almost 22 years to build, using manual methods to create the decorations from literally millions of precious stones. In today's money it cost around £750 million - and it would be literally impossible to duplicate the processes today. We were taken next to see a rare workshop where they still practise these techniques of setting precious stones into marble to create the decorations. It was fascinating to watch the skilled craftsman at work, and to appreciate the level of effort which goes into the process. It takes weeks to produce a single small item such as a plate; it is almost impossible to imagine the effort involved in decorating an entire temple in this way! We were of course given the opportunity to purchase some samples of their work - but at a price which was way beyond our means.

The design is drafted by placing jewel fragments on a sticky orange coating	The jewel fragments are shaped using a small grinding wheel	This shows the size of a typical fragment, ready for placement in the draft design	Another worker etches into the orange layer by drawing around the jewels
He removes each jewel to temporarily re-create the design on a piece of slate	The design in the orange layer is now etched 2-3 mm deep into the marble	The jewels are transferred to the marble and stuck into their etched places	The orange layer is washed away to reveal the finished result.

After a short break for lunch we set off by coach on the long ride back to Delhi, stopping on the way to admire the 'Baby Taj', a small mausoleum which is often regarded as a practice draft version of the Taj Mahal itself.

The Baby Taj

And so we arrived back at Delhi, but only for a night's rest before yet another very early start, to catch a train all the way to Amritsar before proceeding to Shimla.

All pictures on this site are © Allan Jones unless otherwise stated.