Fatehpur Sikri and Agra

A car picked us up from our hotel in Jaipur yesterday morning (Friday) to take us to Agra. We had arranged to stop at Fatehpur Sikri en route. The 3rd Mughal emperor, Akbar, had relocated his capital here from Agra for a brief period in the 1580s. We spent an interesting couple of hours exploring the site. The second photo below is the interior of the building shown in the first photo. It’s an audience chamber and the Emperor sat on the circular raised platform in the centre, accessible at first floor level by a walkway from each corner.

The picture below is of the Buland Darwaza or victory gate, the main entrance to the mosque and built to commemorate Akbar’s victory over Gujarat in 1573. It is the highest gateway in the world, at over 54m and incredibly difficult to photograph. Hopefully our guide’s effort including us for scale, gives an idea of its immensity.

From there on to Agra, where we have spent today exploring the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort and the I’timad-ud-Daulah (otherwise known as the Baby Taj.

The Taj Mahal is simply stunning - I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

Agra fort…back to red sandstone and mighty walls.

And the Baby Taj, built in white marble prior to the Taj Mahal and perhaps its inspiration - the family mausoleum built at the instruction of Nur Jahan, the wife of Jahangir, the 4th Mughal Emperor.