What's up? I'm Marko.
You're watching Vagabrothers,
and this is the Taj Mahal, India.
Welcome back to Vagabrothers.
Right now it's springtime in Northern India,
and in this country at this time of year,
it's all about one thing: the Holi Festival.
This is a festival that's extremely colorful.
It's about the triumph of good over evil,
welcoming springtime,
and it's overall a great time to be in India.
So I'm here with Oneplus
testing out the new 6T cell phone,
which has a super good camera with great
4k video, super smooth and great slow-mo.
We're here with a bunch of other cool creators,
and we're staying at this beautiful hotel right here.
Got the Taj Mahal right outside.
It's way harder than I thought.
Actually, I think there're two mattresses,
and I jumped right between the middle of them
and went all the way down to the bed frame.
The first thing we're doing is we're going to Agra Market.
This place has been a trading town for centuries, for millennia and
we're going to go see what we can find.
You can always find some cool stuff.
It's always like spices and street food and
awesome souvenirs.
Okay, so starting off with some street food,
I got a local specialty here.
This is a samosa.. We have a chili sauce
Inside of the samosa is potato.
Here we go, and this cost twelve cents.
That's eight rupees.
Indian food is one of my favorite things about coming here,
and the street food I think is actually really, really good.
A lot of people are worried when they come to India.
Is it safe? I'd say," Yes."
For the most part a place that's busy
that's turning over a lot of business is usually very safe.
And you know, if you get a little Delhi Belly,
it's part of the experience.
By the way, if you're wondering who's behind the camera..
It'sTaylor O'Sullivan here.
The hungriest girl in the whole world.
Always eating.
We also [ have] here the great Louis. Yes, bro.
Cam. Boom. Boom.
Fifth time in India?
Fifth time in India, yeah.
Second time in New Delhi.
Second time here. Nice.
Right now we're in the Agra Market.
The word for "market" in Hindi is "chawok."
and there're all sorts of different vendors here.
There's street food.
There's like everyday things you might need to get.
There're specialities from the region,
and this place is you know..
Agra nowadays is really famous for the Taj Mahal,
but you know by the horns that we're in India.
Agra today is famous for the Taj Mahal.
It's like the most iconic building in India,
but historically this has been a crossroads.
It's been a trading place,
and it's been the capital of India for a long time.
It was the capital the Mughal Empire
That's one of the most important empires that changed the shape of India for the rest of their history.
So, it's Friday night.
We're standing out front of a mosque,
and they just did the call to prayer.
Friday night is the Sabbath in the Islamic religion,
and so a lot of people are here gathering for the weekly prayer.
They do it five times a day,
but this is the most special of the week,
and it's kind of cool to see this on our first day in India,
kind of soak up this part of this really diverse country.
One of the cool things about this market this time of year
is that people are starting to sell the powders for the Holi Festival.
It's a very colorful festival and people throw this powder at everyone during the festival.
It's made from plant extracts,
and each color symbolizes something different.
Red is for love; Green is for prosperity, etc, etc.
People are just starting to get geared up.
It really starts after the full moon in the vernal equinox
that marks the beginning of spring.
That's next week, still getting ramped up,
but we'll see more of that later. Let's go
Not a bad way to end our first day here in India.
We're staying at the Amarvilas.
This is a five-star hotel.
We've got a view of the Taj Mahal in the background.
This place looks like it belongs to a Maharaja, but it's a brand new property.
And look at this courtyard.
We've got this beautiful pool.
It's been a great first day,
but we're going to go ahead and get some early rest
because we're waking up at dawn to see the Taj Mahal at sunrise.
Few things are as magical as the Taj Mahal at sunrise.
This is a place that's been hyped up and talked about and taken a million photos of.
But when you come here at sunrise,
you realize this is truly one of the most
magnificent human accomplishments on earth:
the Taj Mahal, a monument to love.
It's been around for 400 years,
and it's looking as good as ever.
The Taj was an architectural wonder when it was built, and it still is today.
It was actually constructed using elephants to carry all the marble here,
and the detailed intricate calligraphy
and inlaid marble is still absolutely incredible.
If you see behind me, one of the main features of the building is the symmetry.
Everything is symmetrical all the way down to the tomb on the inside
except the husband asked to be buried next to his wife.
That's the only part that's not symmetrical.
The pillars behind me actually sloped outward,
and that's because they were designed that in the event of an earthquake,
they would fall away from the mausoleum
and not crush the beautiful dome.
It's absolutely incredible.
We're going to go upstairs and take a closer look to this wonder of the world.
It's blowing my mind the comparisons to Uzbekistan.
This really does look like the Registan in Samarkand,
the way the facades are all constructed.
It's very similar to the Uzbek style of architecture,
and it's really cool to travel and kind of see these connections,
especially in a beautiful place like this.
Okay, so after a wonderful morning at the Taj Mahal,
we're now back in Delhi.
And like I said at the beginning of the video,
this is springtime and springtime is all about the Holi Festival.
Now the festival actually starts next week with the full moon,
but we're leaving just before then.
The people from Oneplus have put together a private event
to show us a little bit more about what the Holi Festival is all about.
And to do that we're going to dress in the traditional clothes.
I have a white kurta.
Because it's a celebration of springtime and also the triumph of good over evil,
the white represents purity.
It also shows all of the powders that are going to get thrown on me a lot better.
I've also got a sash and some cool slippers.
It's time to get changed and get in the action.
Okay, so we are all dressed out in the kurtas.
They are "kurtasy" of Oneplus.
We're here; we're going to experience the Holi Festival.
They've got all these powders for us,
and we're wearing this white.
We're going to test out the camera.
We've been using it on the trip as you've seen in the video
But one of the cool things about is it got really good slow-mo
You can do 60 frames a second at 4k,
and it goes down to 240 frames per second at 1080
It's also got an aperture at 1.7.
So it's going to be really cool,
and it should be the perfect environment to test it out.
Let's get inside, learn more about the Holi Festival tradition,
and then start throwing powder at each other. Whoo
Like many festivals in India, Holi has mythical traditions,
and everyone has kind of a different story on how it came about.
But long story short,
most people agree that it's about a prince
whose father wanted everyone to worship him instead of the Lord Krishna.
The son refused and because he did,
the father ordered him to be burned alive in a funeral pyre.
He survived because of intervention of the god.
Okay, that's basically it.
People start the festival on the vernal equinox
when the full moon comes and marks the beginning of spring.
They have bonfires to burn away evil spirits,
and then they throw powder at each other all day long,
and then you have a big feast.
We're going to do kind of a miniature version of that.
We're wearing white so the colors pop,
and we're about to start throwing.
Let's get into it.
That was super fun.
Got to throw powder in my friends' faces.
I can see why people are into this festival.
But tomorrow we're exploring Delhi.
Had to get out of these clothes,
have a good night's rest, and explore the city.
Good morning, everybody.
After last night's festivities, I had a good night's rest.
We're going to be exploring New Delhi,
which is different than the old Delhi.
We're going to go take a walk around to the India Gate,
and I'll tell you more when we get there.
So for those of you wondering,
Old Delhi is different than New Delhi.
New Delhi was built during British colonial times,
which kind of functioned as an administrative centre,
and to this day,
it still houses a lot of government buildings,
embassies, parliament, supreme court, etc
As you can see here, all these buildings are built in the Georgian style of architecture.
It kind of feels like the UK,
but it's a very big spacious open area,
which is a lot different than Old Delhi,
and we're going to walk and see
some of the main sights here in this part of the city.
I'm here at the India Gate.
This is a war memorial originally built for soldiers from the First World War,
and it's also a really big gathering spot.
So seeing a different side of the city.
Last time was in Delhi,
I was an Old Delhi only,
so this is a really cool version of New Delhi.
This is an extremely clean part of Delhi.
Last time I was here I remember seeing a lot more garbage on the streets,
and I think that there's been a big effort to make the city more green.
Still noisy though; still lots of honking.
The India Gate sits at the end of what the British called the King's Way,
an Imperial Boulevard built to commemorate the new
capital in 1911, the jewel in the British crown.
But the British capital lasted just thirty-six years until independence,
and the pedestal that once held a statue of King George V now lies empty.
Well, our exploration of Delhi continues because
everything we've seen so far has really just been New Delhi, which is the eight
capital that's been in this city in the most recent.
It's the British capital,
but there have been eight capitals in just the last nine hundred years.
Delhi is the city that goes all the way back to the ancient Indian epic of the Mahabharata,
which is really, really old.
There's a lot to explore here,
and we're going to be continuing this journey at this UNESCO World Heritage Site
And there's a really cool place right around the corner.
Let's go check it out.
This magnificent building is Humayun's Tomb.
It predates the Taj Mahal and was in many ways a model for it.
But unlike the Taj,
it was a tomb built by a queen for her late husband.
You might be noticing that the Mughals have this tradition of building excellent tombs
for their loved ones that goes all the way back to their history in Uzbekistan.
But by now we've seen so many of their cool properties
that you can kind of say that they were like ancient real estate Mughals.
Wow, that was a bad joke, but it was funny.
Someone laughed there. You laugh there?
Okay bad jokes aside,
that was our tour of Delhi and Agra.
Hopefully, this video was informative to help you guys plan your own trip to India.
If it was, you know to do: give it a thumbs- up,
share it with your travel buddies,
and subscribe to Vagabrothers for more travel tips and vlogs from all around the world.
If you guys enjoyed this video and you want more of India,
check out our videos from Rajasthan.
Last year we went to Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur and Pushkar
for the Puskar Camel Fair.
There's a link in the card right here.
Also big thanks to our gracious hosts Oneplus.
If you guys want more information about the 6T cell phone,
there's a link down below in the info box.
And as always, as we say until we see you again,
stay curious, keep exploring,
and we'll see you guys on the road.
Peace.