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Ravi Srinivasan

We headed out at 6:30 in the morning for Fatehpur Sikri, the Mughal emperor Akbar's dream city.

Akbar founded Din-Elahi, a mixture of Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and Buddhism, and built Fatehpur Sikri as a representation of all these religions. Akbar envisioned that people of different faiths would co-exist peacefully here.

When you arrived at this dream city you are struck by its buildings which are a marvel of coordination of Persian, Christian, Buddhist and Hindu architecture. The red stones, available in plenty nearby, were used in all the intricately designed buildings and the city took about 15 years to build. One of the several buildings was a five storey building. It looked like fully constructed, but was awaiting its walls. There were elaborate designs on pillars, each bearing unique carvings and patterns. The guide was not able to enlighten me about its significance except that it was a unique building within the fort.

There was a Hindu temple, a church, a mosque, a library, a music hall, living quarters for the king and his queens, stables for horses, elephants and camels... all inside the fort. A huge chessboard-like game was drawn in the middle of one of the quadrants. Legend says that Akbar used to play this game with his wives, and real people were used as game pieces!

Akbar had three wives, a Hindu Rajput, a Persian, and a Christian. All his wives were barren except his Hindu wife, whose son became the next Mughal emperor Jehangir, father of Emperor Shahjahan who built the Taj Mahal. The red exterior of the Hindu wife's living quarters had carvings of different types of jhoomkas or ear-rings. There were a hundred and one carvings of ear-rings of different shapes and designs.

Akbar abandoned Fatehpur Sikri within a few years and transferred his capital because of the lack of water. And thus 15 years later the dream city lay silent and forgotten.

We left Fatehpur Sikri and its wonderful architectural buildings for Agra. On the way our driver noticed that the car engine temperature was going up. We were concerned because we did not want to get stuck in Agra due to engine trouble. Our flight to the US from Delhi was to depart late that night and we could not risk arriving late. I told the driver to fix the radiator leak as soon as we reached Agra. He assured us it would be fixed in Agra at the Delhi Tourism mechanic shop.

We reached Agra in good time. The road that lead to the Taj Mahal entrance was blocked a few hundred yards away. It could be reached only by horse-drawn carriages called tongas or by small rickshaws. Private buses and cars were not allowed to go near the entrance. We hired a tonga for Rs 20, less than 75 cents!

Finally, we had come to the highlight of our travels. I had promised my kids that I would take them to see the Taj Mahal in India. This was the main reason that they agreed to take this tour in spite of their disappointment of not eating at a McDonalds or a Pizza Hut or a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet.

Security, we discovered, was tight at the gate. A metal detector checked all entrants and all our hand bags were checked. Cigarettes, paan and food items are not allowed inside the Taj Mahal gardens. The government has taken extreme care and precaution to protect the monument from terrorists and pollution.

The Taj Mahal was simply magnificent. The huge entrance had 22 small domes on top of it representing the number of years it took to build, with 11 of them facing both the front and the back. Arabic inscriptions were written on the entrance starting from the bottom and all the way to its top, which was at least three stories high. The height and the spacing of the Arabic words were designed in such a way that as the building height increased, the height of the letters also increased. This created an optical illusion whereby all the words can be read easily by standing at the bottom of the structure.

We started walking towards the mausoleum and a guide, we hired, explained that the four exterior columns on the Taj Mahal structure were tilted slightly outward. This will cause the towers to fall on the outside and not on the central dome in case of a natural calamity like an earthquake.

As we climbed up the steps to enter into the enclosed white marbled dome where Empress Mumtaz was laid to rest by her beloved husband Shah Jahan, we were awed by the sheer beauty of the white marble with its exquisite coral and jade inlaid.

The guide took a flashlight and placed it on the marble. The translucent property of the white marble dispersed the white light all around the perimeter of the flashlight, proving its luminescent properties.

"You should see the Taj Mahal on a full moon night. The whole garden will be bathed in white light emanating from the Taj," the guide said. He took us inside the dome and asked us to stand behind the middle of the tomb. "Look, the centre of the tomb and the centre of the outside entrance gateway structure which is at least 500 metres away from here all fall in one line," he explained.

We walked out and came to the rear of the Taj Mahal and looked down at the Yamuna river. The guide showed us a half completed structure in black on the opposite bank. "Shah Jahan wanted to build a black Taj Mahal for himself, but his son Aurangzeb aborted its construction and imprisoned his father,'' explained the guide. We stood in silence, overawed by the surrounding beauty.

We turned around towards the Taj Mahal and looked at the fluted columns hugging the white walls of the domed structure. "Touch this column," the guide said. The three sides of the columns were flat and there were no flutes. This was also another optical illusion! The black and gray coloured stripes wedged inlaid on the column gave a fluted column like look, but in reality it was flat.

We walked around the sides of the Taj Mahal and was awestruck by its architectural precision and symmetry. The well groomed lawns and the rectangular strip of pool of water from the building entrance to the marble structure reflecting the Taj Mahal was soothing to the eyes even in the scorched midday sun.

The guide hadn't finished with us. He asked us to stand at the entrance gate facing the Taj Mahal, and to walk slowly away from it. When I stepped forward, the Taj Mahal structure started to zoom in magnitude for every single step. The precision with which it was built and the beauty it possessed left us spellbound. Legend says the architect of the Taj Mahal was executed by the emperor, so this building will remain unique in the world. And so it is!

We returned to our car. The driver told us he had fixed the radiator leak. Great! A short drive from the Taj took us to the famous Agra fort built in red stone. The Agra fort was quite different from the Amber fort. It was more of a fortress geared for battle rather than a palatial fort built for the emperor to relax. Aurangazeb imprisoned his father Shah Jahan in this fort.

Shah Jahan spent his last days in one of the rooms overlooking the Yamuna river from where the Taj Mahal can be seen. We left the Agra fort and drove to Sikandra, to visit Akbar's tomb, a large imposing red building. The exterior of the front entrance of the building had intricate patterns and carvings emphasizing different religious symbols and styles, thus patronising Akbar's Din-Elahi philosophy. The gardens were not as large and open as the ones around the Taj Mahal, yet were a nice escape from the hot blazing sun.

It was 2.30 pm. We were doing good time. We stopped at an Indian specialty restaurant in Agra where tandoori dishes were served for lunch. We had to cover 200 kilometres, to reach Delhi before nightfall. Our journey back to New Delhi was via Mathura. The temple walls of Mathura, Lord Krishna's birthplace, was visible from the highway and we had our darshan of the holy place from a distance, as we were racing against time to reach Delhi.

Our driver warned us that any small accident on the highway or traffic jams could delay us by two to three hours. On the way to Delhi we stopped at a railway crossing. We saw a train passing by where several people travelled on top of the railway compartments. This was an unusual sight for my kids!

The highway between Agra and Delhi was wider and had two lanes on each side. There were pockets of construction on the highway. The highways were not planned well and there were no signs to accommodate the merging traffic from the villages. Since there weren't any clover leaf exit and entry ramps or traffic lights, the roads joining the highway from villages on either side created much chaos and traffic congestion at every junction. One has to be careful for traffic merging from feeder roads as vehicles take left and right turns on the divided highway without any hesitation. At some junctions, we saw tractor trailers, bullock carts and lorries traveling opposite us on the wrong side of the highway. Both inbound and outbound traffic on the same side of the highway! A driver's nightmare!

We rolled into Delhi at 8.30 pm. We had clocked approximately 800 kilometres in two days. After a short break and shower at a friend's home, we departed for New Delhi's international airport. The roads within the airport and its parking lot were choked with Toyota Land Cruisers, BMWs, Mercedes Benzs, Tata Sumos, Cielos, Marutis, and, of course, Ambassadors and Fiats. We bid goodbye to our friendly and helpful driver Gyan Singh who had covered the entire tour in 40 hours, without any mishaps or referring to road maps.

The Golden Triangle tour was both like a safari and a historical heritage tour covering some of the famous monuments and architectural wonders of the world. Amazing! But hectic... whew. I don't think my kids really missed McDonalds on this trip.

Photos by Kevin J Vogeley and Jewella C Miranda. And courtesy Rajasthan Tourism.

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