Gyarah Sidhi

This guide to Gyarah Sidhi in Agra traces the eleven sandstone steps Emperor Humayun raised on the Yamuna's bank in the sixteenth century as an astronomical observatory, and the hemispherical pits where his astronomers once took readings of the sky. It follows Humayun's obsession with the cosmos, which governed his court's calendar and even the color of his courtiers' dress, and places these steps ahead of the grander Jantar Mantars built two centuries later in Delhi and Jaipur. Stand on this bank and look across the river toward ground the Taj Mahal would not occupy for another seventy years.