Incredible India-- Fatehpur Sikri and the Taj Mahal

More adventures in travelling through India--did I mention we spent a lot of time on the bus?  Here are more scenes from our bus window as we traveled to the city of Agra, where the Taj Mahal is located.

 We saw the scene below LOTS--women in their colorful saris carrying large loads on their heads--and I kept trying to get a good picture as the bus went by.

The men in India were dressed in regular pants and shirts, but almost all the women we saw wore the saris, even if they were out working in the fields.  We think the woman in the picture below was cutting the grass by hand.

I mentioned in the previous post about livestock in the streets making it impossible to drive fast.  Below is another example.  Can you see the burro casually standing in the middle of the road where our bus is about to drive?

 This was our first view of Fatehpur Sikri, a royal city built in the early 1500's, but abandoned by the year 1585 because of lack of access to water.  It's been sitting empty ever since; I don't know when it became a tourist attraction.

 It had many lovely architectural features.

The Indian family below were also touring the empty city, and the oldest girl was especially pretty in her native outfit.

We finally got to the highlight of our trip, the Taj Mahal, on our last full day in India.

 We saw our first view of the top of the Taj Mahal (with a bonus rainbow!) from our hotel window in Agra.

The Taj Mahal has been on our bucket list for 30 years, so it was very exciting to finally see it.

 Of course there were professional photographers on hand to take our picture for us and sell us the photo.

 The inlaid marble work is stunning when it's seen up close.  We were able to go inside, but no photographs were allowed inside the tomb.

 I'm putting this picture in to show the crowds of tourists, which were 90% Indian.  It's good to know they appreciate their "wonder of the world".  This was the first places in India where people wanted to have their picture taken with us because they'd never seen white people before!

This was what it looked like after we left the Taj Mahal and tried to get on our bus. 

We were usually surrounded by vendors trying to sell us things, and they especially gathered around the American tourist buses.  Can you spot Kent and David Andrews braving the crowds?

And we left India as we came, with another day on the road in our tourist bus to return to Delhi Airport.  

All of the following pictures were taken from the window of our bus.  Every day we tried to sit near the front so we could get a good view out the window of the bus.   

 No child safety seats in the auto rickshaw this family was riding in!

 This picture is in here not only because of the people loaded in the truck, but because of the sign on the back that says "blow horn".  Most trucks had those words on the back, and believe me, there was LOTS and LOTS of horn blowing in India!  I think our bus driver honked his horn every minute or so; almost like an automatic response that he wasn't conscious of doing.

More men riding on top of a city bus.  Do you think they had to pay full price for a ticket?

Yes, India was a study in contrasts.  There were many stunningly beautiful historic buildings which were amazing to see, but every day life for the average India person was anything but beautiful. 

                             

We're glad we went to India to see the Taj Mahal and to have a better understanding of what life is like for the 1.2 billion people who live there.