A Trio of World Heritage Sites

Our family recently reunited in India and we wasted no time in hitting the road for an adventure.  There were 3 stops on our mini-trip, and the first was Keoladeo Nation Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site worthy of the title.  The reserve is a mosaic of grasslands, woodlands, and wetland swamps that are home to 375 avian species.  On our long walk with a truly expert guide we saw 81 of them! This park is home to several migratory birds from central Asia and this is the time of the year to spot them.  My 2 favorites were the “lipstick bird”, so named for its outrageous coloring, and the black headed Ibis.  Actually everything we saw was click worthy, and I have no shortage of pictures of our day’s hike.  You can see some of them here at this FLICKR link: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjDmsXJ4

Fatehpur Sikri was our next stop. Fatehpur Sikri was built by the great Mughal emperor Akbar around 1569. [Check out the fantastic Bollywood movie Jodhaa Akbar for a great historical look at the inner dealings of the Mughal Empire, and of Akbar in particular. It’s a great film.] He built it as a tribute to a Sufi mystic in thanksgiving for his wife’s bearing a male heir after the mystic’s prophecy of the event.  [Insert huge eye roll over the male part.) This was the first planned city of the Mughal empire and the monuments in sandstone exemplify Mughal architecture at its finest.  The first time I was here for me it compared in splendor with the Taj Mahal.  This time I was a little under the weather so wasn’t able to get myself to the inner sanctums of the city where the most beautiful work was done, but what I saw was still beautiful.  Enjoy some photos at the same link as above.

Last we visited to the Taj Mahal.  It really is “poetry in marble”.  It is a marble tomb built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his favorite wife Mumtaz Mahal.  There is nothing I could write that would compare to its beauty so enjoy the few pictures I took there.