The Taj Mahal
Click on any image for a better look
As soon as my trip was in the planning stages, we started talking about possibly visiting the Taj Mahal this time. Agra is almost 4 hours by car from Delhi, but it’s common for tourists to hire a car and driver and make a day trip out of it. So, on Sunday morning at 6 AM, 3 colleagues and I left the hotel and headed down the road to Agra.
At left is our first view, from inside the main gate. Part of you wants to run up to it immediately, but the best approach is slowly, enjoying the perfectly symmetrical grounds and the reflecting pool.
The road trip to the Taj is half the experience. We were lucky to have a very good driver - unflappable and capable of negotiating roads populated by donkeys, bicycles, bicycle rickshaws, camels, cows, trucks, plus the occasional peddlers and owners of trained monkeys at areas where we had to stop and pay tolls or cross state boundaries. As the sun rose, I saw a lovely Sikh Gurudwara in the distance and, a few minutes later, people squatting over garbage fires to escape the morning cold.
This is the standard tourist shot but, hey, I was a tourist, so I had to have one.
I’d heard that the photographers at the Taj Mahal could be pushy, but our guide picked one out and we discussed prices. Pretty much no risk- you buy what you like. He did a nice job and even took some with my digital camera, so I bought all 9 of the ones he took. The price was a bargain and included the negatives.
Some history: the Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jehan as a mausoleum for the tomb of his favorite wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died bearing their 14th child. The building itself is immediately recognizable because there are so many pictures of it; what is less obvious is the amazing detail when you get close to the building. There are carvings and designs made from inlaid precious stones. Even the calligraphy from the Koran was scaled so that larger letters were used at higher points, making it appear from the ground that they’re all the same height. Interestingly, the 3 colleagues who accompanied me to the Taj Mahal had never been there, either. One remembered a poem he’d read about a man who had always dreamt of visiting the Taj Mahal and when he finally made the journey, he turned around and went home just short of his destination, afraid that it would not live up to his expectations. It was an added blessing to see it for the first time with others. |
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At left is the main gate. The calligraphy in the square panels running around the arch reads, “"O Soul, thou art at rest. Return to the Lord at peace with Him, and He at peace with you."
At far right is one example of the inlay work on the outside. At center, I'm with some members of our India analytics team. The exterior shows signs of damage from acid rain; a recent law now forbids gasoline-powered vehicles in the vicinity.
There’s more information and pictures of the inlay and carving detail on a Wikipedia site. Click here (That's also where I got the translation of the calligraphy, in case you thought I actually translated it myself.) I wish I'd taken more pictures of the detail. Maybe next time!
If you're into jewelry and you notice such things, the 2 bracelets on my left arm were from the shopping trip the day before.
It's hard to stop taking pictures when every angle reveals something beautiful (despite having me in the foreground). The one in the middle is my favorite.
I took the picture at left from the back of the Taj - not because it was extraordinary, but because it seemed timeless. The view probably hadn't changed much since the Taj Mahal was completed. Even the boat on the river looked as if it could have been built in Shah Jehan's time.
The end of Shah Jehan's story is not a happy one. When he became ill, several of his sons had their eyes on the Peacock Throne. One, Aurangzeb, killed 3 of his brothers in various ways, and had Shah Jehan imprisoned in the Agra Fort, above. Shah Jehan lived there for 8 years until his death. I crossed a road full of typical India traffic to get the picture at right, across the street from the Fort, because of the far-off, dreamlike view of the Taj Mahal. This is all Shah Jehan could see of the mausoleum of his beloved wife while he was imprisoned at the Fort. At his death, his remains were placed beside his wife's. The uneven placement of their tombs inside the Taj Mahal is the only aspect of the Taj Mahal that is not perfectly symmetrical.