We have one more major attraction to visit in Agra, Akbar’s Tomb. Our driver is not that enthused about it but it is really not that far away and we walked to Taj Mahal so he didn’t need to wake up early. It takes longer than expected as we pass through Agra, supposedly there is an exam for police officers today snarling the traffic. Still slowly, slowly, we make our way to the tomb looking at the beautiful wall murals along the way.
We finally arrive at the parking area and then it is time to enter the complex. Surprisingly there are few, if any, foreigners here and even the local tourists are few compared to the other attractions. We start with Jahangir Gate the major entrance to the complex and quite a beautiful building in its own right.
The entrance is a popular place to take photos based on what we see and we can understand why as the views are beautiful.
It is magnificently restored and we enjoy exploring it and looking at all the details. The marble inlays are especially worthwhile to admire, they are beautifully done and we really enjoy watching the patterns throughout.
We finally pass through the gate and now it is time to walk to the main tomb which is far in the distance. It is quite surprising, even now after almost two weeks, how huge the emperors tomb layouts are with the tomb in the middle surrounded by the gardens that are walled in and usually have four symmetrical buildings, one on each side.
As we make our way to the tomb we take our time to look both forwards and backwards and we see the gate receding in the distance as we approach the tomb step by step.
We then start exploring the main tomb building, it is one of the most decorated that we have seen since we arrived in India, certainly more than the Taj Mahal. As usual there are a few tombs at the outskirts of the main building, likely of lesser wives or courtiers.
The main tomb is down a long corridor which is quite austere and the tomb itself has been looted a long way back so there is not a lot to see. And there is one person there trying to extract money by explaining lots of stuff that we didn’t ask for and already know mostly so we escape as soon as we can.
We actually like the decorations in the rooms around the entrance a lot more and spend some time here just admiring them. It helps that no one is bothering us as we explore and we have the rooms to ourselves.
We then continue along the side of the building exploring the long corridors and entering each side room. Most of them have a few tombs in them and some are really nicely engraved but unfortunately there are no explanations on who is buried here, in fact many times probably it is not known either.
We then arrive at the next side of the mausoleum with the side building visible in the distance. We walk a bit towards it but it is not that well maintained and there is a group of young locals that seem way too excited about us coming their way so we decide to walk back and try another side.
However on the opposite side of the main entrance the side building is in a sorry state, it really needs some renovation. We wonder what destroyed it, was it time only or did some revolt also have a hand in this?
We then return towards the entrance but instead of exiting where we entered we find another section of the monument with a couple more buildings built likely prior to Akbar’s Tomb. We explore them and then it is time to return to the car and our lodging. However the driver wants to take us to an inlay marble store and we decide to try it so there is where we go next before going to the hotel.
