Help! I've been fortified!

After three cities, I think I've almost reached my fort quota, but it is worth it. Northern India has always been something of a highway. The original settlers came this way followed by the Aryans, followed by the (your western Asian culture goes here). Then the spice and silk roads also came through here. So I see these forts as much being very large toll booths as they were defensive positions. You start to get a sense of this when you are in the Red Fort in Delhi. The buildings above are part of the fort complex and they are white marble. Not the thing you want to protect you from the hoards at the gates. Anyway, we were at the Red Fort in Delhi. Right below is the king's seat where he judged the petitions of the little people, not Munchkins, but HIS little people. He sits on the throne (I know what you're thinking!), his advisers sit just below him in the shade, and the litigants sit in the hot sun until the king thinks their willing to settle.

This is the gate leading to the market street which still has the same type of shops that it did 350 years ago. For any of you who have been to Mackinaw Island or Niagara Falls, the same Chinese suppliers are making the statues, "silk" pashminas, and bobble head peasants for these guys to sell.
Now here's a wall and it goes for 3.5 kilometers around the fort which still houses active military operations.
And here's the family outside the main gate.
Ya know, if I were a marauding horde, I'd be impressed!
I'll write about the tombs in a later post, cuzz we're on to the Agra Fort! In the next picture you can just make out the Taj Mahal in the distance which is the vantage point the old Shah Jahan could look at his masterpiece as he was under house arrest by his son. There are two major (and conflicting) stories about the son: (1) he was blood-thirsty and an all around nasty guy who killed his older brothers and imprisoned his father so he could wield unlimited power in the extreme version of "it's good to be king", and (2) he devoutly followed the Quran which says you don't build palacial monuments with other people's money, so Dad, you get a "time out" for oh, say, 8 years or until you die, whichever comes first. Winners write history, so I'm thinking the legal story is number 2.

You can see a lot of details in this fort that are blends of Persian, Chinese, and Hindu architecture.

So, what's with the Star of David? Like the Swastika, the six-pointed star is from Hindu symbolism. But once again, some of the guides will say it was because the Shah married a nice Jewish girl and put the symbol on the building in respect for her religion -- like THAT's real believable.
Another fort, another turret and gate to storm.
The Agra fort is much larger (over 5 kilometers around the outside wall), but that's not the BIG fort which we have to go to Jaipur and the Amber fort. Here are the private gardens of the harem. The original gardens were supposed to have been a series of pools and garden areas with fountains. There the king's wives and concubines lounged around. No men except da king went here. Even the guards were women. We were told the fierce Rajastani women were the security detail as they were excellent archers who protected the queen and the court.

As you can imagine, the water had to get up to the fort from the tank below. The three tiers below were part of a donkey or camel or some other animal that kept water moving from one level to another until it was up to the top level of the fort and gravity did the rest.
See that hill in the distance? You should be able to make out a wall that snakes up from the left and runs along the spine of the hill and down to the valley below where it then winds its way back up another hill and around to the Tiger fort. In total the wall encompasses about 20 kilometers. Yeowza! Another IGTBK moment.
And below is the saffron island where the king grew the flower to allow its scent to waft up to the castle on the wings of the wind. Of course trying to get gentle fragrance of the saffron flower to overcome the animal sweat and putrid peasant smell was a challenge that the engineers had to overcome. Being FOTK did have its drawbacks as should you fail to solve the good fragrance to bad odor ratio could land you a job as target practice for the female guards of the harem on their training days.
But here is another view to impress the marauding hordes on their approach. You can imagine the castle shining in the sun with a big banner saying in sanskrit "I fart in your general direction".
Maybe you can tell that by this point, we'd seen enough world heritage site fort antiquities that David and Sarah were ready to go back to our hotel fortress which even had a moat as well.I'm going to call it quits for tonight. Watch for "Name that Palace", a traveling quiz show, a parchezee board using people as pieces, and a jaccuzi that brings visions of the bath scene from Mel Brooks' "Robin Hood, Men in Tights".