💎 Hidden gems remaining: 10
One cannot image Agra without the picturesque Taj Mahal. Sadly many of the tourists arrive here only for a glipse at one of the world wonders, resulting in only a day tour visit. But we settled here for a touch longer, allowing us a deeper insight into the red city history. Have we not stayed, our tuk tuk driver would not be able to share his life wisdom with us.
Is there anything more beautiful? yes/no
Why is this even making the list? It should be native wit to include it in your journey, but we starve for a place to dump all our banger photos, so you will have to bare with us.
Built in 17th century, this majestic building is still as glorious as when it was erected for his beloved wife (well, at least she got something standing 😂). This marvellous marble edifice is accompanied by two smaller red mosques; all of them are surrounded by green parks. In the middle, there is a pool, providing a nice reflection (rumour has it she contemplated her life choices here).
The main Taj Mahal piece is actually a mausoleum.
Due to corosion of the mausoleum (guess it is not just stone afterall), traffic in a 4 km perimeter is supposed to be banned with exception of electric golf carts which deliver you to the gate. But as per typical Indian fashion, what should be is not well translated into the real world. Still, there are no rickshaws, only motorbikes and delivery vans. Believed to be full of money, gweilos have a steeper ticket price than locals. In excuse, you receive complementary golf cart ride and water bottle, along with shoe covers if you pay extra for the mausoleum. If you reach for the guide, this attraction alone can cost you more than other local see-sights alone. But it is worth it.
As expected, the secret to glorious photos of heavenly edifice is to annihilate your sleep schedule and make yourself action-ready at 5.15 in the morning. To get the glimpse at the first sunrays and potentially even blue light before that, you will have to stroll the premises even sonner than 6 o'clock. Still, this does not guarantee you the photo spot in the slightest. Prepare to fight passionately for that one sweet spot where everything just clicks into place. And there will be people, crowd of people, who turn into monkeys in order to succeed on their mission for Instagram-worthy bucket shot.
Meditating. Peace is a rarity here.
Sunrise.
Enjoying the gardens.
Despite no red photos published, we assure you there are plenty of blood-coloured parts. The fort resembles the layout of vaster European castles with towering wall enclosing the miniature city inside. It used to house all the early Moghul leaders, their wives and essential personel. Nowadays a small portion is opened for visitors, while the rest remains shut for army use.
In contrast to Delhi, here they transitioned to new materials, such as white marble instead of sandstone. This was a good choice as it paved the way to the white beauty of Taj Mahal. The emperor wanted to prevent injustice in court and installed a golden chain with 80 bells, spanning from the fortress to the riverside. Should noise be produced, his attention was raised. However, we still do not believe such a long chain with so many bells could weigh only 100 kg as they promise. At least not from a reputable gold seller.
Hide and don't get sik.
Running to escape the policeman chasing him (he had a long one in his backpack! the lens!)
View of a mosque!
If you visited our travelogue from Peru last year, you may remember our black kitchen series. We won't spoil anything here, but let's just say the ata impressed us so much we decided to take a similar photo here.
Let's just say we inadvertently started a chain of people looking into a random hole. Rumour has it there are still tourists queueing to glaze into this beautiful void!
Tourists staring into void.
Also called Baby Taj Mahal, this tomb is actually two decades older than the original Taj Mahal! It was the source of inspiration for building the real one. As you can carefully observe, it already uses white marble. They would tell you the main difference between tajs, besides the scale, is the religion attached to each of them. Itmad-ud-Daula is said to be Islam site.
Contrary to the order of tudus, this attraction was the first amongst all. A resting rikshaw driver with notoriously miserable profit that day approached us just outside a restaurant, and upon having discussed our plans, offered us an outstading deal as a private driver for the day. That means he waited for us while we navigated the tomb mazes like a tomb raider. He spilt all his secrets while we were being his passenger princesses. He even chased after us the next two days, offering us various deals on numerous routes. Over the days, we have refined the phrasing more into him "emerging". Whenever we appeared outside our hostel or any of the restaurants nearby, he would pop up from somewhere waving and offering a ride. When we were walking towards the hair saloon later, he would slowly creep after us despite us declining a ride offer. It would take him ages to finally give up and turn around. But he is still a legend. We love you Palai 🫶.
Baby is actually older than parent!
Enlightened tomb.
There is a tomb inside in a unusual tloris of rooms. Namely, there is the tomb room in the middle, and rooms in all 9 "squares" surrounding it. Way leads onto way, but only one room has access to the main one.
An emperor once said: "There are no gardens, there are no streams of water, but I want to relax and chill." So he built the gardens. Planted with over 700 trees and plants, the greenery spans over a vast area. Thanks to it being away from main streets, it is relatively calm.
But to be honest, you don't go here to just observe the plants; you visit this as a better alternative to the Taj Mahal Viewpoint. Marko says you see his ass, and that it is a beautiful ass. You can judge by the photo.
Peaceful eden.
This is not anyhow related to Agra specifically, but we decided to Samson ourselves here. We deliberately let our hair grow before heading towards India, so we could try the local barber and get Bollywood-worthy haircuts. Just make sure to negotiate your price beforehand as foreigners will automagically see their price raised just because. Still, Marko was a bit scared getting his hair cut after negotiating the price. A razor to the neck can be a strong negotiator too.
We have continued our quest to try as many different Indian dishes as possible. Even so, from time to time you have to take a break from unfamiliar food and endulge in better known tastes – we would consume continental or chinese food on rare occurences as well.
This time we did not taste just main dishes and sides, but starters and soups as well. We tried onion garlic soup, which reminded us of tasteless french onion soup with texture similar to chinese thick ones. For the mains, navratan korma, non-veg thali, chicken biriyani, mutton sahi korma, paneer makjani and ghost khada massala joined our food dictionary.
Thali was the most different to anything we had tried to this point. Name thali is mostly referred to the style of eating, where you receive a platter with smaller cups, containing different mains, sides and even a dessert. What it contains is left to the chef and region. We can confirm that this dish provides a well-rounded meal.
Why did we chose ghost khada massala? Because it is a type of mutton goulash, just like mutton rogan josh. It tasted similar, too! Fun fact: it contains cashew nuts. I think you cannot really miss with any mutton josh. We had expected the chicken biriyani to resemble chinese fried rice, however the taste was far from it – it was more like couscous. The absolute worst so far was navratan korma – a weird warm vegetable fruit salad. It was our fault for not having read the description 🤷♂️. But that dish should not even exist in the first place 😂.