Lots of road travel today, which is boring in any country, so let’s instead talk about kabaddi. Melissa and I went to the hotel bar the other night to enjoy a cocktail while playing a game. The TV had on a “sport” that was incomprehensible to us, yet also hilarious. This is kabaddi. On tv, it looks like crotch-shot touch football done while holding hands. Or an insect mating ritual crossed with mixed martial arts – while holding hands. Seriously – go look it up. I’ll wait.
RIGHT?! Kabaddi is hilariously, weirdly intense yet also captivating.
Fast forward 3.5 hours and we made it to Fatehpur Sikri, a palatial complex built in just 12 years starting in 1571. Featuring a palace for each of his 3 wives, fabled to each come from a different religion, as well as parliamentary buildings and a religious compound, the site is magnificent and well-deserving of its UNESCO World Heritage Site status. As a marker of the inability of humanity to learn, it seems that nobody thought to test the local water, and so the compound was abandoned less than a decade after it was completed because of a lack of access to fresh drinking water. Rookie mistake.
Next to the palace grounds is the spiritual compound. There’s a mausoleum to the parliamentary leader (white building in the photo above, center), a massive mosque behind the mausoleum (still in use today!), and a truly massive (54 meters!) gate (left) to mark the entry to the site. This entire area is done barefoot, so we left our shoes outside with a boy to watch them and we hot-stepped our way around inside.
Weirdly, there was no guard or sign to remind women to cover their heads. Whether it’s your custom or not, I think all visitors should respect the custom of those who worship in the houses we visit. Thankfully, we had scarves and pulled them up to cover our heads, but not all tourists did and that made me mad. This is an active house of worship, so come prepared or admire it from outside!
We got the road again and picked up our Agra guide on the way to the Taj Mahal sunset viewing area. Along the walk, we talked about tourists. Boston gets 22-23 million tourists a year (and I believe every last one comes to the North End to eat, walk slowly in large groups down our tiny sidewalks, and buy cannoli and then dump the boxes on our streets). The Taj Mahal gets 15,000 a DAY! I was observing how it can be a mixed bag to have so many tourists – they spend money but they also generally behave badly – and he noted that in Agra, tourism is basically the only job. Because the government wants to protect the Taj Mahal from pollution, there’s no manufacturing, airport, or other polluting industry allowed in the area, and that means few jobs.
Taj Mahal is stunning, even from afar. Its absolute perfect symmetry is calming and peaceful and beautiful. The designs are too fine to see from several hundred meters away, but our cameras hint at the splendor that we will see at sunrise tomorrow.
Vacation Days 