Finding Beauty in India's Bedlam

AGRA, India — Chaos.

It was the only word I wrote in my notebook during the first hours of a three-day trip to Agra, home to Indian emperors and the Taj Mahal, the world's most beautiful and heartbreaking building.

I had scheduled the trip to break up business in New Delhi, India's capital. On a muggy evening, I hailed a motorized rickshaw that careened through streets jammed with unpleasant things: Smoke and dirt billowed through the air, drivers hurled insults at each other and touts harangued me to buy cheap plastic knickknacks. At the New Delhi train station, people crammed through passageways strewn with trash and rats searched for scraps of food.

I had expected travel in India to be both difficult and rewarding — a rich but taxing combination of high culture and snarled logistics. After the Intercity Express train pulled into the station, I found my seat and immediately began to feel better. The first-class car had four private rooms, each with comfortable couches, a sink and an air-conditioner. The ticket-taker was a tall, handsome Sikh with a handlebar mustache.

Most importantly, the room was calm and I watched India slide by as we pulled from the station. It was the night before Diwali, a Hindu festival celebrating the return of Rama — an incarnation of the religion's main deity — and houses were decorated with colorful lights. Passing a village, a group of women wearing colorful saris seemed particularly beautiful.

Agra, a four-hour train ride from New Delhi, provided more euphoric moments. I arrived on a Thursday night. Because the Taj Mahal, which contains a mosque, is closed on Fridays for prayers, I began my trip the next morning with a visit to Akbar's Mausoleum, a tomb built for Akbar the Great, the third and most powerful of the Mughal emperors.

The Mughals, a Muslim dynasty, ruled a large empire from Agra from 1526 until 1648 and built several of India's greatest structures. Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal over 12 years in the 17th century as a tribute to his favorite wife, who had died after giving birth to their 14th child.

Akbar's Mausoleum, was finished in the early 17th century. As I walked through its massive gate I felt I was stepping into India's royal past. Its minarets and peaked roofs glowed a rich red-brown in the morning sun and hundreds of antelope wandered through gardens surrounding a central tomb.

Leaving my shoes outside the sanctuary door, I slipped down a long passageway and into a cavernous room where a man was quietly praying by Akbar's sarcophagus, the soft sounds echoing in the dim chamber.

A few minutes later, I plunged back into India's chaos.

I had hired Punit Gautam, a local driver, and we quickly were mired in a traffic jam. But unlike in New Delhi, I was happy to sit back and marvel at what Gautam called "India's mobile zoo": Farmers led herds of water buffalo, oxen, goats and camels through the streets and people (and a few cows, which are sacred to Hindus) wore flower garlands for the holiday. Barbers had set wooden chairs outside to work and stalls sold dozens of colorful sweets.

"If the Taj Mahal is the seventh wonder of the world, then this is the eighth," Gautam said with only a hit of sarcasm as we inched through our second drove of camels.

Our next stop was the Mahtab-Bagh, the Moon Garden, for a view of the Taj Mahal. The garden was built beside the Yamuna River by an early Mughal ruler who was "much tortured by heat, hot winds and dust," a sign at the gate explained.

When Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal, he expanded the park. It provides an excellent view of the building many people consider the world's finest. I found a comfortable spot on a crumbling wall and gazed at the Taj's four minarets and central sanctuary, each topped with a teardrop-shaped white-marble dome.

Before the trip I had prepared myself to be disappointed by the sight — no building seemed able to live up to the incredible praise the Taj receives.

But instead I was overwhelmed. Partly, I was moved by the building's beautiful lines and near-perfect symmetry. But I was more impressed by its tribute to love, the idea that a ruler was so tormented by the loss of his wife (one of several, but his favorite) that he employed 20,000 artisans to build the elegy.

My third stop, the Agra Fort, reinforced the Mughal rulers' architectural genius. Started by Emperor Akbar in 1565, the fort's outer walls are 70-foot high sandstone that had turned the color of dark chocolate in the afternoon sun.

In room after room, I marveled at intricate details — a white marble tub, flower mosaics, flowing Arabic calligraphy, itself an art. In an unrestored section of the fort, green parrots squawked, monkeys chattered and I was entranced.

That night I indulged in another of India's cultural gifts to the world. A friend had suggested I eat at Peshawri, an Indian barbeque restaurant at the upscale Mughal Agra Hotel. I tucked into a meal that started with poppadam, wafer-thin crackers made from lentil paste, and spicy mint chutney.

The main course was Dal Bukhara — a rich mixture of black lentils, tomatoes, ginger, garlic and a dozen-odd spices that had simmered for 12 hours — and the best Tandoori chicken I have ever eaten.

The trip's climax came the next morning. I woke at dawn and caught a rickshaw to the Taj Mahal in time to see the sunrise turn its domes first pink and then yellow and white.

A sign explained primly that the "changing colors of the sky descend softly on its white marble and it looked new at every moment. The newness is the secret of its beauty."

The central sanctuary where Shah Jahan and his wife are entombed was quiet and sunlight filtering through marble screens illuminated sections of beautiful mosaics. In the middle of the room, under a subdued lamp, their caskets lay side by side.

IF YOU GO:

NEW DELHI

Despite the chaos, New Delhi has much to offer visitors. Good stops are the Lodi Garden and the nearby 15th-century tombs of the Lodi sultans. Old Delhi, a walled city built by the same Shah Jahan that oversaw construction of the Taj Mahal, offers several mosques and the massive Red Fort, as well as thousands of shops, bazaars and restaurants.

Top hotels are expensive (generally starting at $500 for a double room in a five-star hotel), but there are good alternatives. The Jukaso Inn (49-50 Sunder Nagar, www.jukasohotels.com, +91 11-2435-2137) has clean and comfortable rooms starting at about $180. The nearby Marharani Guesthouse (3 Sunder Nager, www.mymaharani.com, +91 11-2435-9521) offers clean but simpler rooms from about $80.

Trains are crowded in India and it's wise to reserve tickets early and to book the best-available class. A first-class seat to Agra on the Intercity Express (train no. 4212) leaves New Delhi Railway Station daily at 5:30 p.m., takes four hours and costs about $20. The 7:15 a.m. Taj Express leaves from Hazrat Nizamuddin station daily and takes 2 hours to reach Agra. Your hotel or Rail Tourism India (www.railtourismindia.com, +91 11-2370-1100, tourticket@irctc.co.in) can book train tickets.

AGRA

Visitors should spend two or three days in Agra. If touring multiple sites in the city, you can avoid hassles by hiring a driver. Punit Gautam has a small company and offered a rate of about $15 for 6 hours. He speaks English and can be reached at +91 9897-523-083.

The Mughal Agra hotel (www.itcwelcomegroup.in, +91 562-402-1700) is managed by the Sheraton and is one of the best deals among the city's top hotels. Clean and comfortable double rooms start at about $225, depending on the season. A number of cheaper backpacker hotels are scattered along lanes near the Taj Mahal.

Regardless of where you stay, eat a meal at the Mughal Agra's Peshawri restaurant or the highly recommended Esphahan restaurant at the Oberoi Amarvilas (www.oberoiamarvilas.com), the top hotel in Agra.