June 24, 2010
Today was incredible. We left around 4:45 as promised (actually that’s a lie, we didn’t leave until after 5 because a few people were late, which didn’t make our professor happy, but we got to the lobby around 4:45). We then took a flight to Mumbai and stayed on the plane for our second flight to Delhi. Seeing Mumbai out of the airplane window was really interesting, because it is such a large city in comparison with anything else I’ve seen so far in India. I wish I had time to go there during this trip! There were slums pressed right against the runway wall. Imagine sharing the back wall of your house with a runway! We landed in Delhi, and were swarmed with an intense and try heat the minute we stepped out of the airport. It was actually quite pleasant. We immediately met our professor for the weekend (a British gent who I take is living in India and was one of our professor’s professors when she was in school), and boarded a bus to Agra.
After the 21-hour bus ride to Aurangabad, the five hours to Agra felt like nothing. The roads were smooth, and the scenery was different. The bus was also bigger, enabling each person to have his or her own row of seats. It’s funny because it always seems like bus drivers here stop to ask for directions a lot, which I don’t remember ever seeing in America. Some of what we drove through in Delhi looked so much like Europe, with its tree lined roads and fence-guarded apartment buildings, that it might have been, were it not for the subtle Indian glaze of details like writing in Hindi, the occasional rickshaw driving by, or (a taboo in Europe) the swastika.
I was reading when we rolled into Agra, and was therefore taken by surprise by the most beautiful building I had ever seen. It was a gateway, to Akbar’s tomb. Akbar had been one of the first Muslim emperors in India, and his tomb is awe-inspiring. The most impressive part about the gateway is the inlaid stone detail, which makes the structure colorful and symmetrical. My favorite part about Islamic architecture is that it turned away from the depiction of human form toward simple design. They are elegant and delicate. The gateway leads into a garden, seen in all these Islamic tombs, which is split into four parts, which meet in the middle at the tomb. In this particular garden were deer and peacocks, much to our foreign delight. The sun also happened to be lowering itself into a golden disk at the particular moment we arrived.
The tomb itself was also incredible. Without as much inlaid stone, the structure made up for it with Jalis (carved stone screens) and layers of umbrella terraces above. Just inside the doors, the foyer was painted with incredible detail, just like one of those beautiful eggs (I’ve forgotten the name).
I’ll put up pictures of these soon, and I actually will post this when I get back because the internet at this hotel is ridiculously expensive. It’s a nice hotel, but the restaurants are expensive, and the professor said we aren’t allowed to walk around Agra at night. This weekend is going to be beautiful though, if Akbar’s tomb is anything to judge by. I was literally almost brought to tears.
