THE INCREDIBLE TAJ MAHAL
The Seven Wonders of the World.
You've probably heard about that list. If you google it, you'll get hundreds of different lists. Usually, you'll find the Taj Mahal on most of those lists, and with good reason. It's an item on a lot of bucket lists, mine included. I just never thought I'd get the chance to see it. It now has a firm checkmark beside it, and it was worth every effort made to see it. (I'll spare you all of those details.)
When visiting Delhi, it is very easy to arrange a trip to the Taj Mahal. There are tons of companies that offer tours, and someone in Tex's office helped schedule this one. A driver picked us up at our hotel at 6 AM. (Ugh. I am not a morning person, especially on vacation. Tex, of course, is bright and chipper at that time of the day.) The drive to the city of Agra, where the TM is located, is 4 hours from Delhi. Fortunately the highways are great, and getting there, as long as you have a reliable driver, as we did, is fairly simple.
The countryside has some greenery to it, unlike Saudi or Bahrain, so it was a pleasant drive, although I slept through a whole lot of it. Jetlag will do that to you.
There is a nice rest stop with convenience store and gas station at the half way point between Delhi and Agra. While waiting on Earl and the driver, I spotted this sign on the convenience store's wall. Being the English teacher that I am, I had to take a picture of it. If you're particular about English grammar and spelling, you pretty much have to leave that at the door when you depart the US. Everything is written like English is the writer's second language, which of course, it is.
"DRIVE LIKE PEOPLE OUT THERE ARE TRY TO KILL YOU .BECAUSE THYE ARE"
We also saw several of these chimneys pouring out smoke. This is an area that makes bricks, and they were busy at work, especially in the late afternoon when we returned.
AND THEN......we arrived. We picked up our guide Kamal and headed to the Taj Mahal. Kamal bought the tickets for us. Then we got in line. I was surprised to see that men and women were separated much like Saudi. Earl and Kamal went in one line and I went in the other. Of course, because of all the purses, the women's line was going much slower. I learned that I had to push my way up to the security counter, because no one was going to wait for me to do so. We met back and got in line to go in. That happened pretty quickly and then we went in through one of the four gates. At that point, you head to the North Gate, the building you see behind Tex and me below. That's grand enough in and of itself. You see all the squiggles above the arch? Those squiggles are vines made of semi-precious stones, inlaid in the marble. Incredible! Almost everything about the Taj Mahal is symmetrical. The engineering of it all is amazing. Just standing in the courtyard with the four gates would have been amazing enough, but the big prize was waiting through this gate.
And there it was. Framed perfectly by the arch of the North Gate, the Taj Mahal looked like this tiny version of what I had seen in pictures. You just want to stop right there and take picture and after picture, and then you realize, it's only going to get better as you move closer.
(For those of you who are a bit OCD and this picture drives you crazy, you'll be able to relate to Tex, who when proofreading this post, told me he knew how to fix this and would be glad to do that for me. Nope. Thank you very much. I like remembering how overwhelmed I was by this building that I didn't even notice. Plus, I'm not OCD, so it doesn't bother me. Sorry, not sorry. <grin>)
To the west of the Taj Mahal sits a mosque made of the same colored bricks as the gates we had just passed through. The Mughul emperor who built all of this, Shah Jahan, was Muslim, so of course, there is a mosque. We were told by our guide that the Shah was very tolerant of other religions, but I've read some articles that dispute this. Whatever his views of religion were, his ideas of architecture and engineering were astounding and likely ahead of his time, and it all shows in these buildings. I'm not an architect, a contractor, or any kind of engineer, but I do appreciate the beauty of preciseness found on this site.
Shah Jahan was the 5th Mughal Emperor and reigned from 1628 to 1658. He was engaged to Mumtaz Mahal when he was 15 and she was 14, but they didn't marry for 5 years, because the date was chosen by astrologers to promote a successful marriage. He married another woman before his marriage to Mumtaz Mahal, and then married others afterwards, but those wives produced very few children and were mostly politically advantageous. His marriage to Mumtaz Mahal was a true marriage and apparently they were very much in love. It was no secret that she was his favorite wife.
Before visiting India, I thought the Taj Mahal was a palace for the emperor's favorite wife. Wrong. Turns out it was her tomb. Wow. Quite a tomb. He was so grieved when she died, that he built the Taj Mahal as a tribute to his love for her. By the way, she died from childbirth complications after giving birth to their 14th child. 14!! She was 38 when she died. 14 children in 17 years. Wow. It makes my 5 seem like a really small family.
While the white marble is beautiful all by itself, it is made even more so by all of the inlays, a mixture of 28 different marbles and semi-precious stones. Black marble and onyx are inlaid in incredible script with sayings from the Quran. Vines with flowers are also inlaid using jade, jasper, turquoise, lapis, sapphire, yellow marble, carnelian, and others. These inlays are polished so that the surface is as smooth as if nothing had been inserted. Incredible beauty!
A view of the North Gate from the balcony of the Taj Mahal.
On the eastern side of the Taj Mahal sits the guest house, where the main dome is being cleaned. Not bad for a guest house, right?
One of my favorite shots. I love how the trees in the gardens frame the magnificent building and make it look even whiter than before.
Each of the four minarets in the corners of the balcony are 162.5 feet tall and are leaning ever slightly away from the Taj Mahal. Our guide said this was done in case something happened to them. They were designed to fall away from the main building. Nothing was left to chance.
Kamal giving Tex more history and tidbits of engineering. Tex loves it. I just want to take more pictures of this incredible wonder.
Just one more shot of the Taj Mahal before I finish. I have a LOT more, but I'm sure you get the idea that it was fabulous and that it really is much better than these shots could ever reveal. Definitely worth its spot on all of those top Wonder lists. And absolutely bucket-worthy.
And now......more adventures await.
