Agra: The Fort [Red Sandstone]

(Continued from Agra: In the Tomb of the Taj Mahal)

Featured Photo: “Green Pyjamas on Red Sandstone”  Agra Fort, India—2011

It’s unusual for me to be unable to recall a meal while traveling, especially when I’m visiting some new and exotic destination. But following my most memorable trip to the Taj Mahal in 2011, my subsequent lunch in Agra is now almost completely forgotten. I attribute this to the simple fact that I did not take any photos of my meal and thus have no visual reminders of what it was like. Indeed, I think I wouldn’t remember I even had lunch that day, except for the two photos I did take during the hour-long respite: a small elephant statue that greeted me as I entered the hotel lobby…

…and the view out the dining room window of a pleasant-looking garden and swimming pool.

Thinking back, I believe I was alone in the restaurant while I ate; perhaps I had arrived after the mealtime rush. And it is only a vague recollection that the hotel had laid out a buffet service for the meal. Probably the food was not bad, but it was certainly not memorable. I am sure that my driver did not accompany me for lunch—perhaps a remnant of India’s long-standing caste system. But his own need for nourishment would lead to another adventure later that day, and once again—as on our journey to Agra—it had to do with snakes, only this time the cobra was not just in my imagination.

After my lunch, I returned to the van where my driver patiently waited, and we set out for our next destination: the magnificent Agra Fort. This citadel was founded along the west bank of the Yamuna River by the third Mughal emperor Akbar (or rather, by his 4,000 workmen) between 1565 and 1573 on the remains of an earlier Rajput fortification and developed as a stronghold of the Mughal empire for several generations. Each successive emperor—Jahangir (Akbar’s son), Shah Jahan (Akbar’s grandson and builder of the Taj Mahal), and Aurangzeb (Shah Jahan’s son and the last of the great Mughal emperors)—would add his own imprint, enlarging and embellishing the fort with a fascinating array of palaces, pavilions, and mosques. But as often seen in royal families, a war of succession loomed, which led to a darker side of the fort’s history.

The drive was short, and our arrival was heralded by a crush of yellow-and-green autorickshaws—essentially motorized versions of the traditional rickshaw…

…which reminded me of the Westcoaster Mailster, those small three-wheeled, gas-powered vehicles used for mail delivery by the US Post Office back when I was a boy in the 1960s.

My driver dropped me off near the fort’s main entrance and then headed off to wait while I saw the sights. I purchased a ticket—at a discount when I flashed my Taj Mahal pass from earlier that day—then approached the massive red sandstone ramparts of the Lahore Gate, also known as the Amar Singh Gate.

Before reaching the entrance, I took a photo of what was once the moat surrounding the fort…

…then continued on, crossing the wooden drawbridge and passing through the gate…

…only to be greeted by another gate, this one taller and more elaborately ornamented.

Through this gate lay yet another, set amidst a garden courtyard and flanked by two gracefully curved and decorated watch towers.

It turns out the Amar Singh Gate is actually these three separate gates, placed close together and at right angles to one another to disorient potential attackers and deprive them of space in which to use battering rams against the fortifications. Through this third gate…

…was a ramp with more grass and trees, where I spied another splash of colorful saris.

The ramp continued on a long, gentle uphill slope, bordered by high walls (another defensive measure)…

…toward even more gateways.

Proceeding through two close-set, narrow gates at the top of the ramp…

…my view opened up onto a spacious courtyard, with tree-studded lawns…

…and the impressive Jahangiri Mahal—the palace that housed the women of the court, dating all the way back to the reign of Akbar (ca. 1570).

I was drawn to the monolithic stone bowl, known as Jahangir’s Hauz, (roughly translated as Jahangir’s Tank or Cistern) set in front of the palace. Created by Indian artisans in the 17th century from a single block of porphyritic rock, it was some three centuries later the tank was moved by a British archeologist to its present, more public location.

In its day, it had been used by the royal Mughal family as a bathtub, measuring 5 feet high, 8 feet in diameter, and 25 feet in circumference at the rim, with steps both inside…

…and out…

…to facilitate entry. Legend has it the tub would be filled with water, then rose petals added, so Jahangir’s favorite wife, Nur Jahan, could bathe in their scent.

I strolled along the front of the palace and rounded a corner, instantly shifting from a newsy to an artsy photographer. There in the shade, on a ledge beneath the carved trimming of the façade…

…lay a man asleep, captured in today’s Featured Photo. I don’t normally take pictures of anonymous people, leastwise not intentionally. Typically, individuals appearing in my photographs are inadvertent photo-bombers. But I especially liked the complimentary color of the man’s comfortable, olive-green pyjamas—complete with a lavender headband—against the hard, brick-red sandstone. And his position was ideal for framing my shot.

After that chance interlude, I resumed my exploration of the fort and found one section, which I believe was once the palace of Akbar, in a partial state of ruin. I reminded myself this was one of the oldest parts of the fort, dating back nearly 500 years to that original builder of the fort.

I came upon an open section of the rampart…

…then ventured into the adjacent rooms having unadorned windows…

…eventually finding one that was more ornate. I looked out the window to the east, beyond the train tracks, toward the bend in the Yamuna River, and again gazed upon the Taj Mahal in the distance, about a mile and a half away.

The view of the Taj Mahal got me thinking once more of emperor Shah Jahan, who not only built that spectacular mausoleum, but also contributed his own beautiful architecture to the red fort in Agra; I had yet to find those sections constructed with his preferred building material, the delicate white marble which he had also used for the Taj.

(To be continued…)