interesting history. The fort was built under the direction of Akbar and modified by Shah Jahan- who later had the Taj Mahal built as a tomb and memorial for his wife. We learned that she was his 2nd or 3rd wife and she bore 14 children, but only 7 lived to adulthood. Of those 7, 3 or 4 were sons and one of the sons took power and had the other 
brothers killed and he imprisoned his father in Agra Fort. 
We could imagine Shah Jahan looking out at the Taj, which is quite visible from the fort. We then moved to the area near the Taj Mahal. They currently try to exclude some vehicles which tend to put out more pollutants from about 1km range of the Taj, so we switched to a battery powered bus to go closer. Our guide was quite good and he led us slowly toward the Taj. We entered the grounds and were surprised by two things. One was how large the Taj 
Grounds are and then by how much it looks like the pictures we have seen! It was about 4PM as we walked around and got different views. We put shoe covers on and went closer to the main structure and then went inside. It was crowded and noisy inside, but we got a good view of the very detailed pietra-dura work. The guide said that the person responsible for the calligraphy on each side of the entry halls was paid as much as the chief architect. The workmanship is particularly stunning! We stayed at the Taj about 2 hours and were very pleased. We were a little annoyed by photographers who insisted on taking our pictures and selling us the pictures as we left. The guide mentioned the legend that Shah Jahan planned a similar structure on the opposite side of the river from the Taj Mahal. The other was to be for himself and made in black marble. The guide said that there were studies done a few years ago which show that there are no remnants of foundations on the other side. There are only gardens. He said that the origin of the legend is not clear, but they think it came through a French traveler who published the story at some time. Its a nice legend. We know about two such travelers- Tavernier and Bernier- perhaps it was one of them.We later went to a shop that makes things out of marble - a craft that is alive and well around Agra. The train left later for Delhi and we arrived in the morning. we had to leave the train by 8am which seemed a bit early, but we went to our hotel and were allowed to check in. We visited the large government crafts store and were awed by the range and quality of items. In the next couple days we saw more of Delhi and were impressed by the size of the city. The traffic seemed more manageable than Bangalore- people told us that it is mainly because Delhi was planned to be a big city, while Bangalore was never planned that way and it has been a case of trying to catchup with the growth over the years.
We returned to Bangalore on Mar. 11, 2009 which is a national holiday in India- "Holi" - which is described as "the festival of colors". We saw many people who were splashed with colors, which seems like fun, until we heard that the colors may take weeks to come off again. We had some difficulty with our seats on the airline again, but the flight was not too full, so we got the empty seat between us that we paid for.
Ziggy and Zoe had company each day while we were away, but they seemed to appreciate having us back home. They stayed very close. We told them about the big cousin that we saw at Ranthambpore Park, but they were not impressed. We look forward to another visit to Rajasthan- after temperatures come down again and the monsoon season ends.
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