ART DECO GLORY

The art deco Umaid Bhawan in Johdpur and the Persian Itmad-Ud-Daulah in Agra do it for me. Those two alone make as visit to India worthwhile. To create a palace as vast as Umaid Bhawan demanded extraordinary courage from the architect and an obsessive attention not only to detail but to a continuity of decorative vision. The result is breath taking. Check out the web site.

AGRA TO GWALIOR - Brrrrm Brmmm

DECEMBER 21
Yes, I know. Dates are confusing. However I am attempting to get up to date.

From Agra south I ride an excellent highway through flat fields splodged with yellow rape. Traffic is sparse and I make good time between village. Millennium of monsoons have gouged twisting gulches between pinnacles of gray-red earth tufted with sparse scrub. Or did thousands of years of brick-making create this chaotic landscape, thousands of men and women endlessly picking at clay to feed the kilns?
Tumbled walls of a fortress cap a long ridge. What in this ghastly land was there to protect? Yet, suddenly, appears the magic of a bridge that once carried the trunk road and is now bypassed by the highway. Seven pointed Islamic arches of red brick span the river, delicate spires at each end, pepper pots in the middle – beautiful!