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Panch Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri

Panch Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri

heritage site · Uttar Pradesh

State
Uttar Pradesh
Type
Heritage Site

Akbar's five-level pavilion at Fatehpur Sikri is all columns and no walls: 176 of them, each carved differently, thinning from 84 on the ground floor to four holding up a chhattri at the top. Jaali screens once filled the gaps, so the women of the neighbouring zenana could take the breeze and watch the Sikri fortifications and the town below without being seen. The screens are gone, so the view now comes unfiltered. The pool in front, the Anoop Talab, once held water and was the setting for music.

Panch Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri is known for

176 carved columnsAkbar-era pavilionFive open storeysAnoop Talab pool

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Varanasi

Varanasi

Varanasi is the oldest continuously lived-in city on earth and it will either be the best three days of your trip or the worst, with very little in between. Take a boat at dawn, not at sunset. At first light the ghats are working — people bathing, washing, praying, exercising — and the boat is quiet. The evening Ganga Aarti at Dashashwamedh is a genuine spectacle but you will watch it shoulder to shoulder with several hundred phones. At Manikarnika, bodies burn around the clock and have done for centuries. You can stand and watch; it is not hidden and nobody will stop you. Do not photograph it, and do not pay the men who offer to take you closer for a donation to the wood. Both requests are as old as the ghat. The galis behind the river are the actual city. They are too narrow for cars, you will get lost, and getting lost is the point — but keep the river to one side in your head so you can always walk back to it. Sarnath, where the Buddha gave his first sermon, is forty minutes away and a complete change of pace. Go on the day Varanasi has worn you out.

Taj Mahal (Agra)

Taj Mahal (Agra)

The Taj Mahal stands in white marble on the southern bank of the Yamuna River at Agra. The Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan commissioned it in 1632 to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, and nothing else the Mughals built comes as close to perfection. The whole structure is symmetrical, and the geometry is exact. You come in through a grand red sandstone gateway, then across a formal geometric garden divided by long reflecting pools. The mausoleum sits on a massive marble plinth, a central dome above it and four identical minarets at the corners. The white marble is intricately inlaid with semi-precious stones, and it changes colour through the day — soft pink at dawn, brilliant white under noon skies, shimmering gold under a full moon.

Agra

Agra

Almost everyone rushes Agra as a day trip from Delhi, and almost everyone regrets it — the Taj deserves a dawn and the city has a second monument nearly as good. Go to the Taj at sunrise, and know that it closes on Fridays. The marble changes colour through the first hour in a way no photograph has ever conveyed; by nine the light has flattened and the crowd has arrived. If you only have one slot, take that one. Agra Fort is the thing people skip and should not. Shah Jahan spent his last years imprisoned in it, looking downriver at the tomb he built for his wife, and you can stand where he stood. It is a working piece of Mughal military architecture rather than a monument to grief, and it is quieter. For the view most people never see, cross the river to Mehtab Bagh in the late afternoon and look at the Taj from the back, across the Yamuna, with nobody in front of you. The city outside the monuments is hard work — persistent touts, heavy traffic, little to hold you. Sleep here for the sunrise, then move on.

Ayodhya

Ayodhya

Ayodhya is an ancient city on the banks of the sacred Saryu, revered as the birthplace of Lord Rama and one of the seven primary holy cities of Hinduism. Since the consecration of the newly built Sri Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir, the city has been rebuilt around it on a scale that has changed the place entirely. Centuries-old temples now sit alongside new roads and walkways laid for visitors. The Ram Mandir, constructed without a single piece of iron or steel, is approached across wide pedestrian plazas. Climb the high stone steps of Hanuman Garhi, or come down to the Ram Ki Pauri ghats in the evening when the lights are on the water — the devotion is the first thing you notice.

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