Agra Fort

A couple of pictures of the Agra Fort (like the Amber Fort in Jaipur, it's more of a palace than a stockade, though fortified with huge sandstone ramparts) and then I think I'm finally done with Agra.

These geometric gardens mimic the patterns in Indian carpets. The gardens at the Taj Mahal unfortunately were replaced by the English with something more to their taste, but I imagine there would have been a lot of this.

Me in Agra

I long ago gave up the need to have a lot of pictures of myself in front of various landscapes and landmarks; I know what I look like and so do my friends and family. It's not that I never want pictures of myself  -- before selfie was even a word, I used to take them occasionally when I traveled, by balancing my camera on some rock or piece of furniture and setting the timer. And I do use my phone once in a while -- I took a few selfies at Petra, after I'd finished the climb to the Monastery on foot and I was feeling rather proud of myself, for example. 

But I have at least fifty (unnecessary) pictures of myself in front of the Taj Mahal, and even more at the Agra Fort, because the guide kept grabbing my camera and taking them. I understand that most tourists probably ask him to take pictures, but I couldn't get him to understand that I didn't particularly want them. In the end I just smiled and posed.

At the Agra Fort, I think he was just trying to hurry me along, because sometimes when I'd say wait, I want a picture of that, he'd try to take it for me. So it became a kind of tug of war, and I didn't always win. I ended up with fewer photos than I might have had otherwise of the things I wanted to take pictures of, and so many pictures of myself that even my mother might have found it excessive.

Don't blame this one on me

This is the inside of the Taj Mahal. No photographs are allowed inside, and after berating other tourists who were breaking the rules, my guide took this picture on my phone.

He explained that photos were banned because they needed to keep the crowds moving, but we weren't blocking anyone. (A kind of dubious justification if you ask me, but he didn't.)

So the quality is what we deserved under the circumstances, but honestly you can't really see that much inside. It's sumptuously decorated, with elaborate carvings and inlaid semiprecious stones on the walls, beneath Persian arches and that massive dome. But it's dark and hot and very, very crowded, so you can appreciate the craftsmanship outside much better.

And of course, it is a tomb. Muslim tradition forbids elaborate decoration of graves, so the sarcophagi behind those elaborate marble screens are empty; the actual graves of Shah Jahan and the wife he built the monument for, Mumtaz Mahal, are underground. (She died giving birth to their 14th child, and, honestly, who can blame her?) 

The Taj up close

Those petals on the top of the main dome are an inverted lotus flower, representing Hinduism. The crescent moon at the top is for Islam.

I know you already know what it looks like...

...but here it is again anyway, in a somewhat less claustrophobic mood.

The scaffolding around the minaret is for cleaning. I like it; it makes it more of a real place and not just a picture postcard (from back in the days when we actually sent postcards.)

Great Gate detail

If you're thinking this looks an awful lot like a mosque, complete with calligraphic verses from the Koran, that's not a coincidence.

I probably knew that Shah Jahan, the emperor who built the Taj Mahal, was Muslim, but I never really thought of the Taj as an Islamic landmark. But that's exactly what it is. The Mughals, who ruled India from the 16th to the 18th centuries, were a Central Asian people claiming descent from both Tamerlane and Genghis Khan. Though Shah Jahan himself was not all that tolerant of non-Muslims, the Mughal culture was a fusion of Hinduism and Islam, reflected in art and architecture.

I don't see a lot of Hindu influence here, but there are lotus motifs all over the Taj Mahal, acknowledging the Hindu sacred flower.

The Great Gate

This is the entrance to the gardens; the Taj Mahal is at the far end on the banks of the Yamuna river. It's the only marble building in the complex -- the others, like this, were built of sandstone.

The Taj Mahal

This was the best view -- seen from the Agra Fort, late in the afternoon, when the city haze turned the famous domes into something out of a dream.

Au revoir

The Tour Eiffel through the web of trees by Place de la Concorde.

I'm at Roissy, waiting for my flight home. It feels as though it's been months since I was in Abu Dhabi but it's only been a little more than two weeks. I have more than a thousand pictures to go through, and I'll be posting them over the next several weeks.

I'm still sorry I didn't get to Ethiopia but it's hard to imagine it could have been better than this trip.

Last day

It was pouring when I woke up yesterday morning, but by the time I'd had breakfast and dressed it was steady rain, and by the time I'd finished my Starbucks latte, it had stopped.

But it was gray and gloomy all day -- here's a view I couldn't resist while walking along the Seine to the Orangerie. It wasn't cold enough to stop me going to the Île Saint-Louis to buy an ice cream at Berthillon, so I had sustenance on the way and my personal Paris food trifecta was complete (baguette with butter and jam, croque-madame, Berthillon ice cream.)

I've eaten at many fine restaurants here on previous visits and they're amazing but this is the food I crave in Paris.

As promised last night

Here's one of the pictures of the castle I took yesterday. It looks relatively benign and less like the fierce fortress it was in the golden light of early evening.

Bartolome

Bartolome is an islet off the coast of Santiago, and has some of the strangest, most beautiful lava formations we've seen so far.

This is Pinnacle Rock, one of the landmarks of the Galapagos, seen from two sides. (In the photo on the right, look for a tiny white dot on top of the larger of the two rocks in the bottom-right corner. That's a bird. Just for a sense of the scale. There's also a bird towards the bottom of the rock in the photo on the left.)