“Namaste” is a Hindu greeting, so it’s a good title for my visit to India. I had a three-night “field trip” to New Delhi and Agra, focused around essentially a drive-by visit of the Taj Mahal. Lots of travel, lots of pictures. I generally prefer to minimize my travel time as a percentage to my tour time, but this is the Taj. I’ll take what I can get.

I’m going to divide this trip into two posts. This post will be the before and after stuff, setting the scene for post two – the Taj.

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About 25 cruise passengers took this “Overland Experience”, which started with the ship’s arrival to Galle, Sri Lanka. A very bumpy tender ride was followed by:

• Three hour bus ride to Colombo
• Four hour flight to New Delhi
• Hour bus ride to hotel

I hate losing an entire day just to travel. However, the Oberoi hotels in both New Delhi and Agra were fabulous. One of the best things about taking these kinds of trips is being able to enjoy the far larger bathrooms than on the ship.

The next morning began with yet more bus riding, this time three hours from New Delhi to Agra. Mid-way we took a bathroom break at a highway stop with many fast food-type restaurants, including Burger King. “But Cruiseboy,” you may ask, “Don’t they not eat beef in India?” Well done, but that doesn’t stop the company – the Whopper is kimchi…

Here are some examples of the Agra hotel. The front courtyard:

… and the view from my room. All the hotel’s rooms have Taj Mahal views.

We arrived in Agra on Friday, and the Taj Mahal is closed? Seems there is an active mosque on the Taj grounds, so they do not allow tourists on prayer days. Makes sense. Therefore, we started by visiting the Agra Fort.

Agra was the capital of the Mughal dynasty until the capital moved to Delhi. Over the years it became more of a walled city than a fort. What brings it into our field trip was how the Shah, sponsor of the Taj Mahal, spent the last years of his life within this fort after one of his sons took over. More details will be in the Taj Mahal post.

However, it’s not like the former king had it rough.

We are now moving from brick and sandstone to marble. The parts of the fort near the river are the newest and were restored by Shah Jahan, the same guy who commissioned the Taj Mahal. Thus, the use of white marble.

After a few hours of rest at the hotel we traveled to across the river from the Taj Mahal. This bank had a basic garden. I’ll save the photos for my next post, but here is something to tide you over.

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In New Delhi we enjoyed a bus-oriented tour of parts of the city. There is a lot of infrastructure construction all over India, but at least they try to make them pretty. Here are some overpass supports.

And just some monkeys walking down the street. One of many “you aren’t home” images.

In the capital zone, here is the India Gate, a WW1 memorial. Looking the other direction are the government buildings. It’s easy to make a comparison to the Washington DC mall layout.

We spent some time at Humayun’s tomb. This was completed about 50 years before the Taj Mahal started construction and you can see the evolution of design. Here they mostly used sandstone with marble only on the dome.