Agra Fort garden

Not nearly as impressive as the gardens in the Amber Fort, but here's photographic evidence that I actually walked through this one.

I usually avoid posting pictures of myself here but I'm enjoying the memory of being outside, somewhere that's not my apartment or the immediate neighborhood, which is all I've seen for many months now. (Today I went to the cleaners and the pharmacy and the bank! Very exciting!)

That long mop of hair looks almost as strange to me. I've been putting the clippers to good use and every couple of weeks my hair gets shorter. I'll be Sigourney-Weaver-in-Alien-3 by the time we're out of quarantine.

Random Amber Fort

Two last pictures from the Amber Fort -- I like the symmetry of the stairs and the domes in the picture on the left, and I am always a sucker for scaffolding.

You see bamboo scaffolding all over Asia, and though it looks dangerously flimsy, it's apparently quite strong -- I was once startled by window washers taking a cigarette break outside my 13th floor office window in Hong Kong, completely oblivious to the fact that only a few spindly stalks of bamboo lay between them and a grisly death on the sidewalk far below.

I couldn't do it, but then I can't think of any scaffolding I'd be willing to climb, no matter how strong it looked.

Flashback: the Amber Fort

The picture on the right is cropped from a larger panorama -- I just love the detail of those walls and towers snaking over the mountains.

I don't think I ever actually walked through that garden; there was too much to see in the few hours that I had there. At least I have pictures.

Flashback: Jaipur

I have not gone through many of my remaining India pictures yet, though I couldn't tell you exactly what I've been doing instead. Like most of us, I'm completely losing my sense of time, feeling as though I deserve a medal for remembering what day it is. (When Thursday is exactly like Wednesday, which was exactly like Tuesday, keeping track does seem as pointless as it is difficult.)

But here's one I like -- outside the Amber Fort in Jaipur.

O'er the ramparts we watched

One last look at the Agra Fort. It looks a lot more like our concept of a fort from the outside.

Interior details

This hallway was one of my favorite things at the Agra Fort, and unfortunately these are two of the pictures that I didn't take. I cleaned them up but they were too underexposed to capture the details -- the way that squinch is entirely carved out of stone.

Kesar Kyari Bagh

This garden, in the lake below the Amber Fort, was originally built to grow saffron for the maharajahs.

More monkeys

More fun than a balcony of monkeys

I'd seen a few monkeys by the City Palace downtown, but they clearly loved the Amber Fort. They stayed high up on the walls and balconies and seemed to mostly ignore the tourists. Almost as if they owned the place.

Practical decoration

These screens are each carved from a single piece of marble. They provided both privacy for the inhabitants of the palace, and ventilation during the hot summer months.

And I love how that window in the center appears to be a painting hung on the wall.

Decoration

Most of it is not this intensely decorative. This is outside a chamber that is no longer open to the public, where faceted surfaces can supposedly create the effect of a starry sky from the light of a single candle. (Worth clicking to enlarge.)

Speaking of squinches

Here's a closeup of one of the many squinches over doorways in the palaces. It's interesting how the shapes and the patterns are so different from the squinches in Iran, with longer, pointed cells, but the effect is very similar.

Ganesh Gate

Although the outer walls and some of the interior are sandstone, the interior gates and courtyards are highly decorated.

This is the Ganesh Gate, named for the Hindu god Ganesha.

I love the squinches.

Amber Fort

Amber, or Amer (no relation to the stone or the color amber), was the seat of government before Jai Singh II founded Jaipur. The fort is more of a palace than an army barracks since it was also the home of the maharajahs, though it is highly protected, with a wall that snakes along the mountains like its counterpart in China.

I took so many pictures there that I am just going to post a few of the most interesting ones, rather than waiting until I have time to go through everything. Otherwise I'll never get to Bharatpur or the Taj Mahal or Petra.