Fort Monkeys and the rest

Here are a couple pictures of some monkeys hanging out at the Agra Fort. And here is the link to the whole flickr set for the trip Agra Set

Fatehpur Sikra

This is a big stone abandoned city on a hill about 40km outside of Agra. It was built by Akbar and abandoned for unknown reasons. Its interesting to walk around, but, honestly, would be more impressive if its something they put together in say, BC, not 1550AD. I feel like much cooler shit was getting built in other parts of the world in the 1500's. This place has aqueducts. Didn't the Greeks use those when they were still fighting off the occasional Tyrannosaurus Rex?

Agra Fort

Agra Fort is from around the same time as the Taj Mahal, the 1500's. Some dude named Akbar (the same dude who had the Taj Mahal built for his wife's body) used it and it was considered "impregnable". I dunno who was attacking him, but you can google it if you care. The Agra Fort was taken over by the British East India company in the 1800's to use as an armory. Now they charge foreigners 250 rupees to walk around in it. Its pretty damn cool, looks like something out of Lord of the Rings.
I should mention that by this part of the day, the Agra sun reared its ugly head and showed me exactly what an India summer can do. And what it can do is fuck you up big time. By late morning it was 113 degrees F and very, very humid. Its the Arizona desert burning hot sun that is so hot you can feel it directionally on your skin, mixed with the saturating humidity of like Chicago in the summer. Absolutely stunningly knock you on your ass hot.

The Scenic Drive from the Taj to Agra Fort

Just a click or two away from the Taj Mahal lies a huge medieval fort called Agra Fort. Here are some pictures from that drive.

People and Critters at the Taj Mahal

Some shots of random people and critters at the Taj Mahal


Chillin' with her pink and purple thermos and her fully automatic machine gun